2021 full moon lunar eclipse: How to see a beaver blood moon in the UK this week

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The nearly total lunar eclipse that coincides with the full moon this week will be the longest in more than half a thousand years.

The Beaver Moon lunar eclipse will begin at 7.18 am on November 19 and last just over 6 hours. The arrival of the sun soon after its start means that UK viewers will miss the peak of the eclipse, which begins at 9.02am and lasts for 3 hours and 28 minutes.

The full moon peak — known as the beaver moon as it traditionally coincides with Native American tribes setting their beaver traps — occurs at 8.57 a.m. GMT Friday, but will appear full on Thursday and Friday nights.

Those in North and South America, as well as parts of East Asia, will have the best view of the full moon eclipse.

It comes less than six months after the last partial lunar eclipse, which occurred on May 26, 2021. This week’s lunar eclipse falls short of being a total eclipse with 97.4 percent of the moon’s diameter covered by the Earth’s shadow.

Only the southern edge will remain untouched by the shade.

The moon will appear slightly red during a lunar eclipse due to a process known as Rayleigh scattering.

“The same phenomenon that makes our skies blue and our sunsets reddish causes the moon to turn red during a lunar eclipse,” NASA explains on its website.

“Light travels in the form of waves, and different colors of light have different physical properties. Blue light has a shorter wavelength and is scattered more easily by particles in the Earth’s atmosphere than red light, which has a longer wavelength.”

Total lunar eclipse: once in a red moon, show all 41/4, total lunar eclipse: once in a red moon, total lunar eclipse: once in a red moon, 17112.bin

It took 50 minutes for the ghostly white moon to turn a deep orange red © AFP / Getty Images

Total lunar eclipse: once in the red moon 17115.bin Total lunar eclipse: once in the red moon 17114.bin Total lunar eclipse: once in the red moon 17113.bin

The US space agency continues: “Red light, on the other hand, travels more directly through the atmosphere. When the sun is in the sky, we see blue light all over the sky. But when the sun goes down, the sunlight has to pass through more of the atmosphere. And it travels farther before it reaches our eyes.

“During a lunar eclipse, the moon turns red because the only sunlight that reaches the moon passes through the Earth’s atmosphere. The more dust or clouds in Earth’s atmosphere during an eclipse, the redder the moon will appear.”

It is this effect that sometimes causes lunar eclipses to be known as “blood moons”.

UK weather will be mostly clear Thursday and Friday night, according to the Met Office forecast, although parts of the north and west will be cloudy and may miss the sky scene.

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