This coming weekend the Moon will experience an eclipse, and in less than three weeks the Sun will be eclipsed by the Moon. The best views for both will be in the Americas, but you might be wondering what the view would look like if you were not on Earth but on the Moon. The view a
First of all, on the Moon, the eclipses are reversed. A lunar eclipse for us becomes a solar eclipse for the Moon. And you might be getting different experiences and visuals, depending on what you hope to observe and your location.
A lunar solar eclipse
So let’s start with a lunar solar eclipse. That means you are on the Moon and the Earth is eclipsing the Sun. This can happen in three ways: total, partial, and penumbral.
Due to the relative size and position of the Earth and the Sun, our planet casts a shadow in a specific way. A thin cone where all of the sunlight is blocked is called the umbra, Latin for shadow. A larger cone where only part of the Sun’s light is blocked is called the penumbra – Latin for almost shadow.
In a penumbral eclipse, the Moon only goes through the penumbra. The full moon will look dimmer, but its near side will be still illuminated by some sunlight. This is what’s happening
In a partial eclipse, the Moon would travel a little bit into the full shadow. That means that in certain regions of its surface, the whole Sun would be blocked. Those regions would be experiencing a total eclipse of the Sun, while the rest experienced a partial eclipse.
The most interesting, though, would probably be a total lunar eclipse. When the whole Moon is in the umbra, something spectacular happens. All sunlight directly coming from the Sun is blocked, but we discover that the Earth’s shadow is not black. Due to sunlight being scattered in the atmosphere, it has a red tinge, which makes the silver surface of the Moon glow in that color.
An Earth eclipse
The Earth is much bigger than the Moon, so its shadow can cover the whole Moon and be seen from a whole hemisphere. This Sunday’s lunar eclipse will be visible from Western Europe all the way to East Asia. A solar eclipse covers a much smaller area of the Earth.
In the total solar eclipse of
From the Moon or in space in general, the eclipse will look like a dark splotch
So if you are ever on the Moon, you should hope for what on Earth would be a total lunar eclipse, to see your surroundings turn crimson. The next total lunar eclipse is next March. The one after will be in September 2025, when
A great option would be to have astronauts on the Moon on