Caoimhín's Content

Today, we are yet again looking into the future and we are yet again looking at an eclipse. However, we’re going to be looking not particularly far into the future, as you can see here, we’ve gone forward to the 6th of September and we will be looking at an eclipse that will be visible from here in Ireland. We’re going to be looking at a lunar eclipse, a total lunar eclipse coming up on the 7th of September.

To begin with, we’re going to double check exactly when it’s visible from here in Ireland and when it’s going to look its best. Taking a look at the Moon at the beginning of the 7th, the Moon is at at 99.2%. Moving along to the end of the 7th, we’re up 99.9%. A perfect total lunar eclipse will occur when the Moon is 100% full, so we need to push either ahead, or back. The fullness of the Moon goes up as we com back towards sunset. Then we get to see the shadow of the Earth. Just after sunset, early in the night of the 7th is when we will catch the end of the eclipse. It looks like we’re not going to see all of this total lunar eclipse, but the lunar eclipse will look particularly nice as the Moon is rising. This is a total lunar eclipse, it was more eclipsed while it was below the horizon. This total lunar eclipse is adjacent to a partial solar eclipse that is also coming up in September. However, that one won’t be visible for us here in Ireland at all. For this lunar eclipse, we’re not getting to see the beginning of the eclipse, we’re only getting to see the end of the eclipse. That means this would look slightly better from somewhere slightly further to the east, where we’d be able to see the Moon a little bit higher.

So let’s take a little bit of a jump, let’s hop a little bit further east. We’ll move back into Europe, just around Central Europe, a little east of Ireland. We’ll go a little bit lower down towards the equator as well, just to put the Moon a little higher in the sky. We’re now seeing the Moon rising close to the peak of the eclipse, so we are seeing pretty much half of the total lunar eclipse. We are seeing the totality, the peak of the lunar eclipse as the Moon is rising. This is when you might call it a Red Moon or a Blood Moon. It is visible with the orange yellow glow of sunset, making it seem a little less red. However, it is completely eclipsed, it is truly a Blood Moon. If we get rid of the atmosphere, we’ll be able to see that even easier. Without the orange yellow glow, the Moon is looking pretty dark and a little reddish, as a Blood Moon should. However, it looks like from slightly further east in Europe, the Moon won’t be particularly high when it’s at the peak of its eclipse, so we’re going to move a little further, much further into Eastern Europe.

From Eastern Europe, the Moon is nice and high in the sky when it is totally eclipsed, so this will give a much better view of the lunar eclipse. The eclipse has already begun as the Moon is rising, but it is still well before being total. This is good enough, seeing the eclipse beginning as the Moon is rising is pretty good as the sky is finally reasonably dark once we reach the darkest part of the eclipse. The northern part of the Moon there truly looks dark, while there’s still a clear reddish color around the southern portion of the Moon. If we keep moving through time, then we’ll see the eclipse completely coming to an end. Again, we don’t get to see the entirety of the solar eclipse from this position, but we do get to see the half of it. If you are in Eastern Europe, you get to see from peak, from its totality, all the way through to the eclipse ending. To see all of it, we’re going to go significantly further, all the way through to the area around the Caspian Sea. In Stellarium, and most sources, this region gets listed as Eastern Europe or Central Asia. Different labels get put on this region of the world, different people have different opinions to what exactly it should be called. From here, we can see the entirety of the eclipse. From the beginning of the eclipse a little after moonrise, we can see the Moon reaching its darkest, being completely eclipsed, and then through to the end of the eclipse.

This is a total lunar eclipse, we just don’t get to see all of its totality from here in Ireland. It looks like the location around 50 degrees north and 50 degrees east, gives the best view. This is Western Kazakhstan, north of the Caspian Sea. This location gives us a chance to see the entirety of the lunar eclipse. Starting again from its very beginning, we can see the umbra and penumbra coming on onto the Moon. The umbra, the real shadow, has a slightly different color in different parts of shadow, beginning with a dark, almost blue-grey, before the bulk of the shadow which seems more red. The shadow completely covers the Moon as it is being totally eclipsed, the whole Moon reaching that dull reddish color. Then the shadow of the Earth moves off the Moon. You might be able to see if you have this view of the Moon, at the very beginning and end of the eclipse, the dark shadow is the umbra, the actual shadow of the Earth, and the rest of the Moon is in penumbra. As the true shadow passes off the Moon, you might be able to see a kind of faint line moving across the Moon. That’s the Earth’s penumbra, the outer shadow, which doesn’t have the awesome red color.

After the penumbra moves away, the Moon is completely unobscured, none of the Earth’s shadow is on it. This leaves the Moon perfectly full, and I do believe that it’s pretty close to the Earth. It’s not too far from the closest it’s going to reach, so this could be called a supermoon, depending on your definition. It is pretty close to the Earth, out of a 350,000 kilometers minimum it’s at 365,000 kilometers and change. The eclipse at its absolute totality is going to look great, and a little bit before and after, when we get both that reddish color and the hint of a bluish color along the edge of the umbra, those are some of the best times to see the eclipse and to photograph it. Even though we’re not seeing it as perfectly, we’re not seeing it in its entirety from here in Ireland, we are still getting to see a reasonable portion of this eclipse. For this lunar eclipse in particular, it’s going to be important to try and catch the Moon as it rises, so we can see it being partially red and partly blue and the umbra moving off the Moon and then the penumbra moving off the Moon as we move through the night. We do get to see a reasonable portion of this total lunar eclipse, unfortunately, we don’t get to see the totality of the total lunar eclipse, but large portions of the Earth will. Large portions of Europe, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and beyond will get to see this eclipse at its maximum.

The upcoming partial solar eclipse is going to be a little bit tougher to see. We won’t see it at all from Ireland, so we’re coming up the way down here to roughly the south island of New Zealand. I’m really aiming for Stewart’s Island, which is off the coast of the southern island of New Zealand, way down in the corner of the map, as it seems with most common kinds of map projection and perspective. We’re still looking at this year and we’re looking at September still, but we’re going forward to the 22nd. So it looks like we’re looking at the morning of the 22nd. From the ideal location, we should get up to 80% obscuration on the Sun, but that is the most anywhere will see, so it is only a partial. Despite that, it is pretty nice, the Moon covers enough of the Sun to give it a nice kind of curved shape, almost like horns in the sky. It looks like we’re getting an obscuration of 73%. Not the 80% that I was expecting, but 73% still pretty good. This isn’t as obscured as Ireland will get to see the total solar eclipse on August 12th, so even though we don’t get to see the totality of the total solar eclipse on August 12, we’ll see more obscuration than this partial solar eclipse is giving at its absolute best location. All solar eclipses are visible over a portion of the world, and this eclipse is no exception. You can see a reasonable chunk of the Sun being taken away if you’re viewing it from Antarctica. I do believe that once we come around to just off the coast of Australia, I don’t know if there will be any eclipse at all. There may be a little, just barely as the Sun is going down, the Moon makes contact. Really, this eclipse is for people on the southern island of New Zealand, it’s going to be very difficult to see any amount of obscuration from anywhere else. We’ll check from the northern island of New Zealand as well, and there is a little bit of obscuration there, in fact, not a terrible amount, 62%.

That is the next solar eclipse, it’s only a partial solar eclipse, but it is the very next one. We won’t be able to see it from here in Ireland, hardly anyone will get to see it. However, we do have a very nice total solar eclipse that we will get to see some of once we’re through to 2026, on August 12th. More immediately, there is also this lunar eclipse coming up. Here in Ireland on the 21st of September, the Moon is close to the Sun, but not close enough to block it out, not close enough to cause an eclipse for us here in Ireland. We’ll move back to the 7th and we want to catch the Moon as it’s rising because that’s when we get most of the eclipse from here in Ireland. That puts us at sunset on the 7th. We are getting a total lunar eclipse on 7 September, unfortunately, it won’t be a total lunar eclipse from here in Ireland. This lunar eclipse is in the same eclipse season as the solar eclipse that’s coming up on September 21st, but very few of us will get to see that.

I hope you get to see some of these eclipses, I hope you at least get to see the lunar eclipse. If you’re in Europe, there’s a very good chance you’ll see at least a little bit of lunar eclipse in early September. I hope that you enjoyed this video, if you did, please do like it and if you like this kind of content, then please subscribe to this website and my YouTube channel. Thank you very much for reading and hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.