46 votes

Can a lunar eclipse happen at night and be followed by a solar eclipse the next day?

No. A lunar eclipse occurs when the moon is on the opposite side of the Earth as the sun. A solar eclipse occurs when the moon is on the same side of the Earth as the sun. And it takes the moon 14 ...
James K's user avatar
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44 votes

Is it possible for a lunar eclipse to occur before sunset

Yes, barely. The atmosphere bends light, especially at rise and set. When the sun appears to be on the horizon, it is actually about a degree below the horizon. This means that when the sun and moon ...
James K's user avatar
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22 votes
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Can the Earth be seen from the moon when we have a total lunar eclipse at the perigee?

The Sun eclipsed by the Earth was actually recorded in 2009 by the Japanese lunar satellite Kaguya (athough this was strictly speaking not a total eclipse as such; see explanations below) Here the ...
Thomas's user avatar
  • 3,041
22 votes

What is the difference between New Moon day and Lunar Eclipse?

A new moon is also when the Earth is in between Sun and Moon. You got this one wrong. The description above applies to full moon. Correct is: A new moon is when the Moon is (roughly) in between Sun ...
Ralf Kleberhoff's user avatar
18 votes

What is the difference between New Moon day and Lunar Eclipse?

The orbit of the moon is tilted relative to the ecliptic by about 5 degrees. This means that when the moon passes the sun, it might be up to five degrees above or below it in the sky. Since the sun ...
James K's user avatar
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16 votes
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How much longer is this (July 27th 2018) lunar eclipse than others?

The NASA has a lot of data on eclipses. I've pulled the table for the 21st century in Excel. There are 228 eclipses of which 85 are total. The durations below are for the totality phase. The duration ...
Glorfindel's user avatar
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15 votes

Can the Earth be seen from the moon when we have a total lunar eclipse at the perigee?

Can the Earth be seen from the moon when we have a total lunar eclipse at the perigee? Yes - but primarily it's the Earth's atmosphere that you would see. Earth's atmosphere will refract and scatter ...
uhoh's user avatar
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15 votes
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Why does Callisto only have eclipses every 3 years?

They do happen at certain points of every Jovian year. Jupiter's orbital period is approximately 12 Earth Years. the relative angle between the plane of Callisto's orbit and the plane of Jupiter's ...
notovny's user avatar
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13 votes

Is it possible for a lunar eclipse to occur before sunset

It happens all the time, you just need to pick your place. When there is a lunar eclipse, you need to travel to a location on the terminator. (The terminator is the edge of the illuminated hemisphere ...
g.kertesz's user avatar
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12 votes
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Could there be an eclipse tomorrow if the Pleiades is covered by the Moon tonight?

Consider how far the pleiades are above the ecliptic, and how far the moon travels in a day. From this you can work the angle at which the moon must travel relative to the ecliptic, in order to cross ...
Dr Chuck's user avatar
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11 votes

Can a lunar eclipse happen at night and be followed by a solar eclipse the next day?

Yes… if you're on Mars. Earth's Moon is far enough from Earth that its synodic orbital period (i.e. the time between two full moons or two new moons) is about 29.5 Earth days. The time between a full ...
Ilmari Karonen's user avatar
10 votes

Why aren't there eclipses every month when the moon's orbit is aligned with the ecliptic as a result of lunar precession?

There are few things here I think might be worth to state: The tilt of Earth is of no importance here. As the comment says what is of importance how much the Moon orbit is inclined to the ecliptic. ...
d_e's user avatar
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10 votes
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Radio signals between Mercury and the Moon during an eclipse

A total eclipse occurs when a full moon coincides with an orbital node of the moon. That is to say it occurs entirely due to the relative position of the Moon to the Earth and Sun An elongation of ...
James K's user avatar
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9 votes

How much longer is this (July 27th 2018) lunar eclipse than others?

The NASA NASA Five Millenium Catalog of Lunar Eclipse says that the longest total lunar eclipse was 106.6 minutes or 1 hr 46.6 minutes. The link for this century shows that the July 27th eclipse is ...
astrosnapper's user avatar
  • 8,357
9 votes

Why doesn't the moon always follow the same path? Or why aren't the moon's apoapsis and periapsis fixed?

The Moon's orbit about the Earth is only approximately elliptical. The Moon's orbit precesses both axially and nodally, and the eccentricity of the Moon's orbit varies. That the Moon's orbit ...
David Hammen's user avatar
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9 votes
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Why aren't there eclipses every month when the moon's orbit is aligned with the ecliptic as a result of lunar precession?

The precession of the moon's orbital plane does not align it with the ecliptic plane. The angle between those two planes is approximately 5.14° (it varies by ~±0.15°, mostly due to perturbation by the ...
PM 2Ring's user avatar
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9 votes
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Distance from Earth to Mars at time of November 8, 2022 lunar eclipse maximum

JPL Horizons makes this pretty easy. It gives 0.58950405608881 AU, or 88188551.559899346096867 km, or 54797825.42445825 miles. Though I believe the ephemeris used by Horizons is accurate to only ...
Greg Miller's user avatar
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8 votes

Can the Earth be seen from the moon when we have a total lunar eclipse at the perigee?

The Moon as seen from the Earth looks dark red during a total lunar eclipse — it doesn’t go completely black and disappear. That’s because it is still partly illuminated by sunlight refracted through ...
Mike Scott's user avatar
8 votes
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Do the Sun's rays get focused at or near the L1 Lagrangian point?

The Sun's rays don't get focused, by the Earth, at L1. The Earth can act as a gravitational lens and it does have a focal length of 15,375 AU, more than five hundred times the distance to Neptune. ...
Dave Gremlin's user avatar
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6 votes
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Why doesn't the moon always follow the same path? Or why aren't the moon's apoapsis and periapsis fixed?

The moon's orbit is elliptical. This is what the moon's orbit looks like from above (A is the Earth, and C is moon, c is the orbit of the moon around the Earth) As you see with an eccentricity of 0....
James K's user avatar
  • 120k
6 votes

What’s an Earth-Sun-Moon eclipse called?

The Sun won't pass between the Earth and the Moon in the near future, because the Sun is so much further away from the Earth, than the Moon. When the three are nearly co-linear, either the Earth ...
Connor Garcia's user avatar
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5 votes

What is the maximum possible separation between sun and moon in the earth sky for an eclipse to occur?

We'll need the angular diameter of the Sun: 31.6-32.7 arcminutes; the Moon's is between 29.3 and 34.1 arcminutes (found on Wikipedia). The solar eclipse case is 0 degrees; it can only be an eclipse ...
Glorfindel's user avatar
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5 votes
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Do the gases in the Earth's atmosphere affect the color of a lunar eclipse?

From the way you have formulated your question, it seems to me that you are aware of the light diffusive process named Rayleigh Scattering and why it explains the various tints and colours of the sky ...
Alchimista's user avatar
5 votes

How to read an eclipse chart?

'P' is the penumbra, the zone where the Earth blocks some, but not all, of the Sun's light from reaching the Moon. 'U' is the umbra, the zone where the Earth blocks all of the light from the Sun (see ...
astrosnapper's user avatar
  • 8,357
5 votes

Terran eclipse?

As Wayfaring Stranger's answer says, during a lunar eclipse seen from Earth, an observer on the Moon would see a solar eclipse. Earth is about 4 times the apparent diameter of the Sun. You can see a ...
Keith Thompson's user avatar
5 votes

Has anyone filmed a total lunar eclipse from the Moon's perspective?

What can you say but "Wow..." http://www.space.com/32245-total-solar-eclipse-video-dscovr.html "The moon's dark shadow travels across Earth's face in spectacular new views of Tuesday's (March 8) [...
Fattie's user avatar
  • 1,126
5 votes

What was the day of the week for the total lunar eclipse (saros 61) that occurred on April 14, 32 AD?

The eclipse took place on the 14th of April in the Julian Calendar. The 14th of April 32AD in the Julian Calendar was a Monday. 32 was a leap year starting on Tuesday. The confusion may be because ...
James K's user avatar
  • 120k
5 votes

Radio signals between Mercury and the Moon during an eclipse

Thought it would be easier to visualize. Here I used the "worst case" values with Mercury's elongation at parhelion, Earth at aphelion, and the Moon at perigee. This also assumes they're ...
Greg Miller's user avatar
  • 5,857
4 votes
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Does earth's Umbra reach Sun-Earth L2?

The Lagrangian point $L_2$ is very close to the most distant point from Earth with an umbra. $L_2$ is like the radius of the Hill sphere at $r=a\sqrt[3]{\frac{m}{3M}}$ for circular orbits, with $m$ ...
Gerald's user avatar
  • 11.6k
4 votes

Terran eclipse?

A lunar eclipse on earth is a solar eclipse on the moon. The earth takes up 2° of sky from the lunar surface (vs 0.5°), so you'd see less corona in your space suit. The moon's speed through earth's ...
Wayfaring Stranger's user avatar

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