This week, Earth witnessed a stunning spectacle not seen since 2022 — a total lunar eclipse. This celestial game of hide-and-seek treated skywatchers to the spectacular sight of our neighbor turning a beautiful shade of red, in what is commonly called a "blood moon."
This unusual coloring happens during a total lunar eclipse due to a phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering, which causes some wavelengths of light to scatter more than others. During a total lunar eclipse, Earth perfectly blocks the sun's rays, but light bends around the edge of our planet, through the atmosphere. There, particles in the atmosphere scatter the shorter-wavelength blue light, leaving the longer orange and red wavelengths to cover the moon in their distinctive hue.
