Couldn’t stay up to see last night’s red moon?
No worries. That was only the first of four opportunities in the near future to witness the astronomical event. The next late-night showing will be Oct. 8.
Last night’s eclipse was the beginning of a tetrad - four consecutive, complete lunar eclipses that occur when the sun, Earth and moon are in perfect alignment. There are six months between each eclipse.
During each eclipse, stargazers will see the moon turn red. That’s because at mideclipse, sunlight filtered through the Earth’s atmosphere casts the moon in an amber or reddish glow.
A NASA news release describes it more poetically: “As you scan your eye around Earth’s circumference, you’re seeing every sunrise and every sunset in the world, all of them, all at once. This incredible light beams into the heart of Earth’s shadow, filling it with a coppery glow and transforming the moon into a great red orb.”
Tetrads aren’t necessarily unusual. But getting to see one isn’t an experience that all can claim.
“The most unique thing about the 2014-2015 tetrad is that all of them are visible for all or parts of the USA,” NASA eclipse expert Fred Espenak said in a news release.
“During the 21st century, there are eight sets of tetrads,so I would describe tetrads as a frequent occurrence in the current pattern of lunar eclipses,” he said.
“But this has not always been the case,” he added. “During the three hundred year interval from 1600 to 1900, for instance, there were no tetrads at all.”
In recent years, some evangelical Christians have started using the term “blood moon,” attaching religious significance to tetrads and other celestial events.
For Texas megachurch pastor John Hagee - New York Times best-selling author of Four Blood Moons: Something is About to Change - the tetrad heralds a “world-shaking event.” This event, he has contended, signifies the beginning of the “end days.”
Hagee drew criticism in 2008 for declaring that an angry God inflicted Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans as punishment for planning a gay rally.
He later apologized.
Pastor Mark Blitz also seeks to connect astronomical events to biblical dates and prophecy in Blood Moons: Decoding the Imminent Heavenly Signs, published in March.
He wrote: “One morning, as I was praying, a thought popped into my head: Why don’t I compare the dates of the eclipses on the NASA website to the dates on the biblical calendar?”
It was then, Blitz said, that he realized this tetrad’s 2014 eclipse dates fall on Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles and will do so again in 2015. The same thing happened during a 1900s tetrad, he wrote.
Arkansans in the southern or eastern part of the state may have been unable to see last night’s eclipse because of cloudy skies.
But whether one wants to see a red moon because of his beliefs - or because he can’t pass up a good celestial show - he can stay up late or set an alarm on Oct. 8, or next year on April 4 or Sept. 28.
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 04/15/2014