Near-total lunar eclipse will glow in Tennessee’s sky Friday morning

The moon orbits the earth. The earth-moon system orbits the sun. And occasionally, the three bodies align for a fantastic show.

Early Friday morning, Tennessean sky-gazers can see the longest partial lunar eclipse in 580 years.

Earth’s shadow will crawl across the moon and stop just short of totality. About 97% of the moon will be covered at the 3:02 a.m. CST peak, when the infamous tangerine hue — from indirect sunlight bended through the Earth’s atmosphere — might set in.

Courtesy Sky & Telescope

Lunar eclipses sometimes reveal reddish hues due to indirect sunlight bended through the Earth’s atmosphere.

Eclipses serve as a nice reminder of the geometry and movement of our solar system, says Vanderbilt University astronomer Dr. Keivan Stassun, who plans to stay up Thursday night to watch.

“It’s not every day that you get to directly experience this astronomical scale movement of things … right in front of your eyes,” Stassun said.

The event begins at 12:02 a.m. and will take just over six hours, while the pass through the darkest part of Earth’s shadow, called the umbra, will last nearly three and a half hours.

At peak, the moon could appear about 10,000 times dimmer than before the eclipse began. The Pleiades constellation, also called the Seven Sisters, will become very visible nearby during the darkest phase.