SANTA MONICA, CA – Mark Thursday and Friday June 18-19 November, on your calendar. You might want to plan an eclipse party in Santa Monica and watch the full frost moon turn red. It’s an overnight party so grab your paid vacation requests – you might not want to drag your tired you to work.
It’s a partial solar eclipse that’s visible here and across North America. It will be an impressive event that lasts 3 hours, 28 minutes and 23 seconds. According to NASA, this will make it the longest lunar eclipse of the 21st century.
And practically it is almost a total solar eclipse.
Usually the light of the sun turns the face of the moon off-white. But when the solar eclipse peaks on the 19th, our planet will block 98 percent of the sunlight from reaching the lunar surface, turning it a reddish hue.
Related: 2021 guide to meteor showers and other heavenly events
A partial lunar eclipse occurs when the moon crosses the earth’s penumbra or penumbra and only part of it passes through the darkest shadow or umbra.
For this reason, a total or almost total lunar eclipse is often referred to as a “blood moon”. The November full moon, with or without a solar eclipse, is also called a full frost moon, sometimes also called a full beaver or dark moon. All were terms used by Indian tribes who gave the moons distinctive names to mark the time of year. The frost moon is the last full moon of autumn.
Although the solar eclipse lasts about 3½ hours from start to finish, most of the action takes place over a period of 2 hours. People in all 50 states will be able to see it. Here are the prime times by time zone:
- Easter: 2-4 a.m. on November 19th
- Middle: 1-3 a.m. November 19th
- Berg: midnight-2 a.m., November 19th
- Pacific: 11pm November 18th-1am November 19th
You don’t need any special equipment to see it. All you have to do is go outside and look up.
If it’s cloudy or inconvenient to stay awake and watch the eclipse, you can watch a livestream of the lunar eclipse.
This month’s solar eclipse will be visible in most of North America, as well as eastern Russia, Japan, the Pacific Ocean, Mexico, Central America, and parts of western South America.
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