‘Blood moon’ visible across Canada overnight, early morning

0:00Sounds like it's a bad twilight film sequel directed by M. Night Shyamalan about vampire werewolf hybrids in love. But Blood Moon, not so much cooler than that, Skywatchers hoping to get something of a rare cosmic show in the wee hours of the morning over Edmonton provided Mother Nature gives us a little bit of a break and certainly not looking like that right now. But hey, Frankie Florian from Tell Us World of Science, let's hope for the best. Oh, I'm hoping for the west. I can only hope that it clears up a little bit tonight. Indeed. Well, thankfully, it's a pretty extended window for what we're talking about here. And we'll get to that moment. But Blood Moon talked to us about what this is, what it is. We're going to be seeing in the cosmos. Should the clouds clear and how rare is it? Right. Yeah. So tonight we should be seeing a total lunar eclipse. This is where the moon moves into the earth's shadow. And when it's actually directly in the earth's shadow, there's no direct sunlight reaching the moon. But there is a little bit of sunlight that passes through the earth's atmosphere.

1:03And the red light that's in that light will bend the most, illuminating the moon with a eerie reddish glow. One more like a coppery glow, if you ask me. But that'll be taken place later, I guess, tomorrow morning between four and five AM. You'll see a red moon in the sky leading up to that point. You'll see the full moon of our March sky disappear into that shadow before it becomes that red moon. Yeah. And then that's the thing, right? Because when we talk about the clipses and things to that effect, a lot of them tend to kind of come and go in a matter of seconds or a matter of minutes, right? Whereas this one, you know, the perhaps it's going to work in our favor because of the cloud cover that we're seeing right now that we might be able to catch a window at some point in that three hours. This is an extended opportunity. Well, pretty much. Yeah. When we're dealing with solar eclipses, the total solar eclipse is last just for a few minutes at most. But a total dinner clips can last upwards of an hour and a half for when it's the darkest portion of the earth shadow. So linear clips are more common. We see them every few years. In fact, we have one last year in the month of March.

2:04We'll have a very deep partial lunar eclipse, not a total in August on August 27th this year. And then we don't get to see another total dinner clips here in Alberta or Canada until the year 2028 on December 31st. Okay. Well, yeah, definitely get it checked off your to-do list tonight if Mother Nature agrees with us. Here's the thing. We can just look at this, right? Like we don't need a special lens or visor to be able to look at this without the risk of burning our retinas. Yeah, of course. So you're just looking at the moon itself and the moon itself is even a bit darker than a full moon would be because it's going into that shadow of the earth. So when the moon takes on that red or copper glow, the moon's brightness can do to reflect the sunlight. There's no cracks in the light reaching it, dimmed down quite appreciably, which face me in just around the country somewhere and you're looking up. You'll see all the background stars around the moon making for a really cool experience. So those individuals are away from bright city lights tonight and if they have a clear view, they're going to be in

3:05for a very special treat. So how are you going to be up or are you going to just say Mother Nature's throwing this cloud cover at us and it's not worth my time? How does someone like you handle something like this? What patients take a look at the weather forecast and look at the weather radar and see where their clouds are going. And right now, as the clouds themselves, we're serve on the edge here in Eppington. It looks like if you're further south in Alberta, you know, definitely have clearer skies. But again, we're serve on this edge so there could be a good possibility that the clouds move further to North Bepton along us to see the eclipse much better. In fact, just looking up at the sky right now, there are some clearing spaces inside in the cloud cover itself. So that's what we might expect tonight is that the moon might show itself for a few minutes and then be clouded out again and then show itself again. So I think that's what I'm kind of hoping for being able to see a bit of it tonight. But really, if it gets cloudy, it gets cloudy and you can't do anything about it. And indeed, I'm curious in terms of the

4:06blood moon, you talked about the frequency that we've seen it here in the last couple years, leading into 2028. What does this rank in terms of the rarity of moon type occurrences? Well, the moon type occurrences, it's again, wherever not that rare, it's more common than say, like a solar eclipse or anything to that nature. In terms of just viewing the moon, it's always great to look at the moon at any given night. Just when you have something like this, it just takes on a totally different look, basically. Yeah, and obviously this is the one we're talking about right now. Is there anything else that's coming down the pipeline in 2026 that maybe we should be bracing for in terms of cosmic displays? Well, we can still keep looking up and see a lot of Aurora. Aurora has been really, really good lately. And now we're just coming out of the solar maximum. So the next couple of years are probably still really good for watching the aurora in our nighttime sky. But after that, it'll probably start to diminish. We won't see as much of the aurora in our night sky as we have over the past few years. So yeah, it's 11 years solar cycle for the sun.

5:11So we're just coming out of the best of it. So there should still be some really incredible northern lights this year. So I definitely go up for that. There's also a very partial solar eclipse that takes place on basically August 12th this year. Very partial. You'll need special viewing glasses for that. We'll have the observatory signs are open for that. It takes place around 10 to 11 a.m. So again, very partial. If you go to Spain, though, and to near Iceland, you can see a total solar eclipse, which is really an incredible site. But from our location here, it's just a partial solar eclipse. And lately, we have a lot of people come out to the observatory. On the one clear night, we did have this weekend Saturday night. They all came out to take a look at the alignments or parade of planets or eating sky. However, a lot of them came out too late. And some of those planets are already set off towards the west. But if people are out and about if you get a clear sky this week, let's keep hoping. You know, you can still see some of these planets up on our evening sky right now. Very cool. Are you guys sure? Are you planning to open it all tonight? I'm going to keep my eyes peeled on the sky. If it looks like it's going to be promising

6:18to open, I'll be at the observatory tonight to have the telescopes over for anybody that might be a late night owl that wants to come on by. But, you know, if anybody is thinking about coming by, just look up first. If it's overcast, you can't see the moon at all. Remember, it's a full moon. So it's pretty bright up in this guy. If you can't see the moon shining through any of that cloud, forget it. You're not going to be able to see anything even with the telescopes. So I'd say stay away. But if it does look kind of promising when there's some breaks in the clouds and people are up and about, they can combine the telescopes full of signs up to them. And I'll be out there with the telescopes. Should it be clear enough to do so? There you go. Yeah, definitely. Look up to see if there's a little bit clarity, both to see if you can partake in some of the tools over the telescope's world of science. And to be sure that you can, you know, stay still clear, the vampire werewolf hybrids that are going to emerge as a result of the blood moon. Frank, I was always man, appreciate talking to the cosmos with you and open fingers across that we do get a window tonight for this. Yeah, let's go for this. We can always have to just wait

7:19for the next one. Then I guess we miss this one. Yeah, well, 2028, that's not too far off if it comes to it. For years. Yeah. Frank, Florian, senior manager of Planetarium Space Science over the telescope world of science, just letting us know everything you need to know about the blood moon that is going to be hovering a top of Edmonton tonight and hoping that there will be a little bit of a reprieve from Mother Nature gives us a little bit of cloud cover clarity. And we'll be able to see that neat occurrence.