Tonight: last lunar eclipse until December 2010

Romantics, kids, scientists and the just plain curious will all be starry-eyed today at 8 p.m…. Romantics, kids, scientists and the just plain curious will all be starry-eyed today at 8 p.m. as they watch the moon glow an eerie shade of orange-red during the last total lunar eclipse projected until December 2010.

“What’s nice about a lunar eclipse is that you don’t need special equipment, you don’t need to worry about going blind looking at it, and you have more time to watch it than a solar eclipse,” said Pitt Professor Jeffrey Newman.

Newman teaches the popular “stars, galaxies and the cosmos” and has encouraged his class to check out what he calls “one of the most dramatic solar events.”

Tonight’s eclipse is total, which means the moon will be all but blacked out as it passes through Earth’s shadow, illuminated only by red light with wavelengths long enough to pass through the Earth’s atmosphere without being scattered. (Think Roy G. Biv with the wavelengths getting shorter as the name gets longer.)

“The light has to pass through a lot of atmosphere to get to the moon and the atmosphere scatters the shorter wavelength blue light out,” said Newman.

This indirect route means the sun’s rays will have to curve around the Earth, pierce through the atmosphere, hit the moon and then reflect back to us, making it likely that the ruddy hue will appear somewhat faint unless seen from a dark spot, away from the city’s glow.

For viewing, Newman recommends staking out a spot that’s as close as possible to being free from light pollution. For him, that spot is his front yard.

“I’m just going right outside my house in Squirrel Hill to watch,” said Newman.

Despite not needing any high-tech facilities to catch a glimpse of lunar history, Carnegie Science Center will be putting theirs to good use hosting a free guided observation in the Buhl Observatory.

Pitt Professor John Radzilowicz is on staff at the Carnegie Science Center and together with some of his staff will be leading the audience in their observation startig at 8 p.m.

“At Buhl Observatory we have a large, 16-inch telescope and some refractors that are good for viewing the moon,” said Radzilowicz.

He says the eclipse should become visible to the naked eye around 8:45 p.m., but the audience will be able to see it in its penumbral stages through use of the telescopes.

Newman and Radzilowicz agreed that while the eclipse will last much longer, it should reach its pinnacle around 10 p.m.

“It will be the most dramatic right as it enters totality around 10 and then again when it leaves totality around 10:15,” Newman said.

Radzilowicz said the thing to watch for is the specific shade of red that this eclipse reflects.

“The red really varies quite a bit depending on the condition of the atmosphere,” said Radzilowicz, noting that the biggest impact on how muddy or sharp the red appears is not pollution, but how recent and severe the Earth’s volcanic activity has been.

“This is sort of the hat trick of eclipses we’ve been joking because it’s the third lunar eclipse in the last 12 months,” said Radzilowicz.