Supermoon over the High Fens by Peter Poppe

About "Supermoon over the High Fens"

by Peter Poppe

About the artwork

A lunar eclipse occurs when the sun, the earth and the moon are aligned, with the earth naturally in the middle. Normally the moon reflects the sunlight to the earth - the moon itself does not give any light - but during a lunar eclipse that is not possible because the moon is in the shadow cone of the earth.
The moon therefore no longer receives - direct - sunlight, and the sunlight that still falls on it has passed through the earth's atmosphere and is deflected, so that it still reaches the moon. That sunlight is also "filtered" by particles in the atmosphere, the light with shorter wavelengths such as blue becomes more scattered, so that especially light with longer wavelengths, such as red light, remains. This means that the moon turns red during an eclipse.
The red color of the moon depends on the amount of material hanging in the atmosphere at the time of a lunar eclipse: large volcanic eruptions, which emit a lot of dust in the atmosphere, can make the moon dark and deep red, and large cloud decks can do that . Astronomers have a moon brightness scale during an eclipse, the Danjon scale, which ranges from 4 (copper / orange), over 3 (brick color), 2 (rust color) and 1 (dark gray / dark brown) to 0 (very dark).
Popularly the phenomenon is called a blood moon, but astronomers don't really like it. The name originated because the color red is often associated with blood, but as mentioned, the moon does not always turn red during an eclipse.