You probably know that, every so often--and always at the Full Moon--that the sun will suffer an ‘Eclipse’; that is where the Sun, Moon & Earth are lined up perfectly so that they all form a straight-line in the universe. The curiosity is that, from the Earth, the sun & moon appear to be the same size. They are NOT the same size! The moon is about a quarter of the diameter of the Earth (the Moon is 1,740 km at it’s equator; the Earth is 6,378 km; the Sun is 700,000 km; so that is 1 :: 3.67 :: 4,023) (1 => 4 => 4,000 in round figures). However, the moon is much closer than the sun, and they appear to be the same size because of that (the actual figures are 384,402 km for earth-moon & 149,600,000 km for earth-sun) (a ratio of 1:389).

So, when the 3 bodies are in a straight line, and the moon is between the earth & the sun, on the earth we can see an eclipse of the sun (the moon covers all, or part of, the sun). However, if you think about it just a little, it will be obvious that when the same thing occurs, but the earth is on the sun-side of the moon, we will also get an eclipse of the Moon, as the earth’s shadow covers the moon. When the line-up is perfect the eclipse is total, and in those situations the “Blood Moon” appears:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-27032240

The picture above was shot by John Mageropoulos in Florida, USA. He describes himself as an “amateur aviation photography enthusiast”.

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Alex Kemp