The Moon This Weekend Is Only a "Blood Moon" If You're Being Stupid
Sunday night (in the Western Hemisphere) the shadow of the the Earth will fall on the face of the full moon, darkening it. This is the uncommon, but not too uncommon, phenomenon called a “lunar eclipse.”
Recently—very recently—people have started calling it a “blood moon.” This sounds very ancient and mystical and spiritual but is a bit of contemporary gibberish pasted together out of scattered Bible verses by some moronic apocalyptic preachers.
There’s some specific mumbo-jumbo about the relative timing of a series of eclipses that qualifies one, in this made-up scheme, to be a “blood moon.” None of that changes anything about the underlying natural phenomenon of the Earth’s shadow falling on the moon. Sunday’s eclipse will be more or less the same thing that always happens at these times.
If you call a nice normal lunar eclipse a “blood moon,” you are being a moron. The specific moment that morons first drowned out normal people was April of 2014:
That people also became more interested in “lunar eclipse” as they went wild for “blood moon” just makes the whole cultural spasm more depressing. The Oxford Junior Dictionary deletes “acorn” and “buttercup” while adding “blog” and “chatroom”; people are so estranged from the basic human understanding of nature that it takes a fake-profund End of Days fad word to convince anyone to look up.
A “blood moon” is not some special apocalyptic celestial phenomenon. It is a standard lunar eclipse, if a moron is talking about it. As in any standard lunar eclipse, the moon may or may not appear to be tinged with red while it is in shadow. It also may or may not appear to be tinged with the color of tea, or cocoa, or dead leaves. Dead Leaf Moon!
This particular Dead Leaf Moon will be made marginally more interesting because the moon will be at the perigee of its orbit, so that it is closer and (a little bit) larger-looking than usual. Some people have taken to calling this a “supermoon,” which is silly hype but at least is not dumb mysticism.
According to NASA, the eclipse will begin at 9:07 p.m. and will reach totality from 10:11 to 11:23. The National Weather Service predicts the night in New York City will be mostly cloudy with a chance of light rain. Enjoy the lunar eclipse if you can!
