Astronomy lovers, brew some coffee and practice your patience tonight, the Beaver Lunar Eclipse is back!
In the early hours of Friday morning, 11/19/2021, we will see a partial lunar eclipse across most of North America.
Here in southern Colorado, the only challenge will be cloud cover moving across the state tonight.
Here's a quick recap of a lunar eclipse.
As the Earth revolves around the Sun, and the moon revolves around the Earth, sometimes the Earth will block sunlight from hitting the moon.
When Earth's hard shadow covers the moon, a lunar eclipse occurs.
There are three phases of a lunar eclipse.
A total eclipse is where Earth's shadow completely covers the moon and gives it a reddish color.
A partial eclipse is where most of Earth's shadow covers the moon, but some of the surface is left exposed. During a partial eclipse, the moon will still usually take an orange to reddish look.
A penumbral eclipse is where Earth's hard shadow misses the moon and is only partially blocked by the soft shadow.
Here's the timeline for the eclipse tonight across southern Colorado.
The moon will start to become covered in shadow just after midnight.
The maximum eclipse will happen at 2:03 am, and things should come to an end just after 3:45 am.
In order to see this eclipse, you'll want to look west over the mountains just past midnight.
It might not be a bad idea to head east a bit, just in case the mountains block some of the start of the eclipse.
The biggest problem will be cloud cover.
Models are forecasting high level, overcast skies from late today through the overnight hours.
Our suggestion, if you really want to see this, is to head out close to 2 am and just look west over the mountains. If there are any breaks in the clouds, you'll see a pretty cool sight!
