Red Moon

[seekermeister]

Some years ago, I saw the moon appear sort of a dull brick red. Hadn't thought too much about it until now, but when it popped into my head, I Googled a partial explanation in this article:

What causes a red moon

I can understand how that would be, if when I saw it it was near the horizons, but it was not, in fact it was about mid sky. I suppose that the explanation might still work, if it had been the kind of day that would have stirred a lot of dust or something into the atmosphere, but that wasn't true either. Is there another explanation?

 

[Airbot]

Moon always turn red from being blocked during a partial, or total lunar eclipse. Maybe you saw it during an eclipse years ago, and didn't know there was an eclipse..

 

[seekermeister]

How is a lunar eclipse different from the Earth's shadow that is cast on the moon on a monthly cycle?

 

[Golden]

In a lunar eclipse, the Earth sits directly between the Sun and Moon. The earth doesn't cast a shadow on the moon, except during a lunar eclipse. Check this out to understand lunar phases:

Moon Phases / Lunar Phases Explained

 

[Hipster Doofus]

We had one down here a few weeks ago. No way was I going to get out of bed. Plus there was cloud cover.

 

[seekermeister]

In a lunar eclipse, the Earth sits directly between the Sun and Moon. The earth doesn't cast a shadow on the moon, except during a lunar eclipse. Check this out to understand lunar phases:

Moon Phases / Lunar Phases Explained

Thanks for the link, it shined a bit of light on the subject. I understood an eclipse sufficiently, but not the phases of the moon, but that is now cleared up.

Somehow, since the moon always faces the same direction toward the Earth, I had thought that the phases had to be caused by the Earth's shadow, but I now see that it is not. I had thought that the dark side of the moon had to be on the backside of the moon, but I now see that was wrong also. The back side of the moon is lit in the same cycles as the front, but we can't see it from Earth, either dark or bright.