the.com/blood moon
Earth photobombs the moon, and sunset light paints it eerie rust red.
means A folk term for a total lunar eclipse, when the full moon passes through Earth's shadow and glows a dim, coppery red instead of disappearing.
from The red comes from physics, not poetry: sunlight passing through Earth's atmosphere gets bent and filtered the same way it does at sunrise and sunset, scattering out blue light and bending the leftover red glow onto the eclipsed moon. The name 'blood moon' itself is more folklore than science — it's an old, evocative label (with echoes in biblical and apocalyptic lore describing a moon 'turned to blood') that got popularized in modern times, especially around recent eclipse tetrads, rather than a term astronomers coined.
- actual cause
- sunlight bends through Earth's atmosphere onto the moon
- same physics
- it's every sunrise and sunset, scattered onto lunar rock
- only happens
- during total lunar eclipses, never partial ones
- no danger
- despite the name, nothing apocalyptic actually occurs