The recent lunar eclipse was spectacular.

From here on Earth, small telescopes showed the Earth's shadow moving slowly across the Moon's surface, crater by crater. That event was unique in that it was the first total lunar eclipse to be observed by the Blue Ghost spacecraft on the Moon's surface. The image shows a red ring with a brilliant diamond, which was the Sun peeking past the edge of the Earth.

The Moon orbits the Earth at a slight angle to the plane in which our planet orbits the Sun. When the Moon is crossing that plane and happens to be on a line joining the Earth and Sun, the Earth can pass through the Moon's shadow, giving us a solar eclipse, or the Moon can pass through the Earth's shadow, giving us a lunar eclipse.

Because the Earth is about four times the diameter of the Moon, our planet's shadow is bigger, so lunar eclipses are more common than solar eclipses.

We are familiar with how lunar eclipses appear to us on the Earth's surface. These always happen at the time........

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