This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
Here in North America, we are in the midst of a tetrad of lunar eclipses, the second one visible Wednesday morning.
A tetrad of lunar eclipses means that there are four total lunar eclipses in a row. This NASA video explains it well:
http://youtu.be/5gzgSuJM5O8
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The second of the four will be a colorful lunar eclipse on October 8, at 6:25am EDT. Again, NASA explains why we see the colors we do:
If you want to know when you can catch your eclipse, you can find out at the website Time and Date.com
I live in central Illinois, and the times for the sequence of eclipse events are as follows:
This is a great opportunity to share the lunar eclipse with children if you can wake them up a bit earlier for school tomorrow.