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The Night Sky Podcast | Lunar Eclipse And The Saros Cycle
Hello, and thank you for listening to this episode of the night sky podcast. My name is Billy Newman. And I’m Marina Hansen. And today we’re going to be talking about the changeover to the spring equinox that just happened a couple days ago, the new full moon that we had the eclipse that we had. Yeah, I just had that this morning, right? Yeah. A couple active things going on last couple days.
pretty active. Yeah, a little a little bad weather here, though. So we didn’t really get to catch the eclipse this morning.
Yeah, no Eclipse visible for us. I think it was, I was most visible for people on the west coast, before dawn. And I’m sure there’s a lot of people that that got good, a good viewing of it earlier today, or anybody like that’s down in California and probably got a way better chance to get a chance to see it. But here in the northwest, it was pretty cloudy over in the West. on the horizon, we had a little bit of sunshine this morning, which I think was a surprise with the rest of the day. It’s kind of been on and off again, rain.
Yeah, he’s really got me here in little Eugene.
So we missed out on the eclipse that happened. But yesterday, the moon rose as a full moon and the constellation of Libra. That’s where it is right now. And I guess I, so we had the lunar eclipse. And that was at like four in the morning Pacific Coast time, you can see it before the sun rose. And then I think just as the sun rose, and as the moon was starting to set is when you can see it, which was kind of a it’s kind of a cool thing. I was looking at that a little bit, it’s sort of rare for that to happen for the sun. And I mean, it sounds illogical when you say it almost, but for the sun to be up invisible in the sky. And then for the moon to also be up and visible in the sky. But for the moon to be eclipsed is like a really rare but possible event for them to be lined up like that. Yeah. So that you can be standing on the earth looking out eastward toward the sun and westward toward the setting moon and have the moon be Eclipse, but you can still see both bodies at the same time. It’s weird that there could still be a shadow cast on the onto the other body. But you can see them both at the same time. It’s sort of a perplexing kind of thing that can happen. But I think that was a possibility today as the as the sun was rising here on the west coast, there’s a chance for you to see the setting moon, as it was a clips or as it was dark. It’s really cool. It’s kind of interesting how that works.
But it’s cool. And so that’s, that just happens sometimes. But there are other eclipses that we have where where it’s not lined up like that,
right? Well, I think in a lot of places. So so for there to be an eclipse that exists, there has to be a thing called a syzygy, which is a cool word to spell. It’s like s YZYG wise. Or that doesn’t doesn’t spell it I think I’m trying to sound out. But I syzygy is a word that’s a connection of three celestial bodies, and like some kind of alignment. So for an eclipse to happen, what we’re looking at is the sun to be out there. And then four, in this case, a lunar eclipse the earth to, to occult, the sun, in relationship to the moon so that the Earth moves right in front of directly in front of the sun that is out past behind the earth. And then therefore the large shadow of the Earth is cast all over the moon. So that’s why we get often we get more total lunar eclipses than we get total solar eclipses. Or at least that’s part of it is that like for us, we’d see a partial eclipse of the sun in some parts of the earth. Because the moon is so much smaller than the Earth, right? The moon shadow was cast. And that would look like a dot that’s kind of darkened on the surface of the earth, where the where the line of the solar eclipse would be. But in relationship to the moon, right, since it’s a smaller body, then the moon will just be cast into the earth shadow for a much longer period of time. Right. So that’s where we get hours of an eclipse, full moon, but we get only minutes of an eclipse sun. This is interesting. Yeah. Yeah, it’s interesting that works. But the whole system of eclipses on themselves is a really interesting and complicated cycle that I really don’t understand yet. I’ve been trying to do research on it and trying to like figure it out for this for this podcast so that we could talk about how the cycling system of Eclipse works, because that’s some part that I’ve been interested in. But I never really had a concrete understanding of how to predict or what is what is the prediction system for finding out when an eclipse is going to happen? Or why is it that we don’t have an eclipse every single month, right? I mean, the the earth and the sun and the moon are all going to find themselves into some point of conjunction. Every month, right? We get a new moon and we get a full moon in a cycle every month. So there should be a solar eclipse on every new moon and a lunar eclipse. Every Full Moon, you would think, because the bodies are just lined up to each other. Does that make sense? Yeah. And so the reason that that does not happen is actually pretty peculiar. So there’s the ecliptic line. And the ecliptic line is the path that the sun takes through the stars throughout the year. And so that’s where we get the Zodiac constellations that we follow. Or the would that be the constellations of the ecliptic to bring it outside of astrology terms. But so what we see then is the moon doesn’t follow the ecliptic. Exactly, it’s got like a 5.9 degree shift from the ecliptic. And it’s sort of cycles back and forth above 5.9 degrees like above, or 5.55 and a half degrees above the ecliptic line. And then, so it’s like an ascending position of the ecliptic, and then below the ecliptic, which is at this descending position on the ecliptic. And so it does this twice a month. And this is called the drew conic cycle. Right? You’ve mentioned that before. Yeah. And the draconic cycle, or draconic month is the period for what’s called a node to occur. So it’s a position of there’s so many terms in this to explain and this podcast is going to be followed me really not understanding the full depth of stuff, right, because it’s so there’s so many different systems and different like cycles that’s that we’re going to get into in a minute, so that your chronic month
we dived about sidereal months, I think a few episodes back when we’re talking about like the Lunar New Year and the lunar system and how the moon comes from fall to, to a new moon, and then kind of back again, so there’s, there’s a sidereal month, which I think is like 29 and a half days. And that’s a new moon period to New Moon period. And then there’s this draconic month, which is like 27 and a half days, and it’s not exactly there’s, there’s so many different there’s that anomalistic month, and there’s like a sidereal and what’s a synoptic month, there’s that one too, there’s so many things to get wrapped up in the two we’re going to focus on is sidereal months of 29 days, let’s round, and then these draconic months, which are 27 days. Now, the way this deconnick cycle works is as we mentioned a second ago, there’s this five and a half degree shift that the moon has, um, the ecliptic plane that we see around the Earth, which is the ecliptic is the path that the sun takes. And so what happens in this deconnick cycle is that the moon will move from a high position five and a half degrees outside the ecliptic down to what’s called a node. And a node is the term that they use for the intersection of the ecliptic line of the sun. And the orbital path of the moon as it crosses and intersects. At that point, that’s called a node. So as the moon drops from its 5.5 degree height of its of its offset from the sun, and the ecliptic line, it’ll cross through that diagonally. And for one point, though, it’ll be at a node. And this is the only point that in Eclipse, either solar or Lunar can happen is right when the moon is at a position of being an iconic node. Okay, these happen twice a month, I was about if I understand, right, so it will fall 5.5 degrees above at its max in the wave, then it will fall down to zero at a node. And then it will descend to 5.5 degrees below the ecliptic, and then back again, to a new node at zero and the back again to an ascending peak at 5.5 degrees above. Does that make sense? It’s so complicated. And so that happens every 27 days. Okay, but that’s different than the sidereal month of New Moon, New Moon, which is every 29 days. And so what we see is, if we had an eclipse, like we had an eclipse today, it’ll be 27 days from now that we’d have the opportunity for an eclipse when the moon is at the position of an of its draconic node. Right. That’s the next time it will happen. But the problem is the reason that we do not have an eclipse every month, like we’re talking about is that the moon is not yet full. Or it’s not, it’s not back to its same position in the cycle in its sidereal cycle. That takes another two days. So the moon is not in the position to be eclipsed yet during that time.
Okay, so that’d be a time that we wouldn’t get an eclipse. That would be
Yeah, that’s like, wow, there’s so many months out of the year that we would not experienced an eclipse, or why there there wouldn’t be something going on it eclipses only happen at these times. Where the the node where the moon is in the exact right position to be eclipsed by the shadow of the earth.
And what’s, what’s the name for that, or is there a name for that cycle when those two things lineup right?
Yeah. So there’s there’s a few different things to understand. So the the early system that I understand for how people started to get a handle on the way that these eclipses would work, I think prime Well, there I’m sure very interested in, in solar and lunar eclipses trying to understand what standby that would happen. lunar eclipses are more frequent, and they were well tracked. solar eclipses are sometimes more difficult to see, but are also common. And over centuries, or over a lifetime, they would start to appear more often, and I’m sure people had religious beliefs or cultural meanings put toward them, you know, through their groups of people that they are with. And so I think over time, the older people would start to pass down sort of the system or the last time they saw one, or how that would work. And there’s a lot that I found out after looking into how eclipses work, and why it seems so sort of haphazard the way that they fall. But it’s also interesting, though, that, you know, we really do have it planned out very well. And it happens exactly where it’s supposed to, when it’s supposed to closely, they shift a little bit, the predictions do shift a little bit, but they happen almost exactly when they’re supposed to. And this is a thing that I think is measured, or at least the most accurate and oldest cycle for predicting. The next Eclipse is something called the saros cycle. And I think it goes back to like, ancient Babylon, like Mesopotamia, before the Greeks and all that, I think there’s talk a bit I think it’s talking about like 500 BC, which really isn’t as far back as that. So I’m not quite sure there, there’s a person, there’s a lot of record of someone predicting an eclipse in like 534 BC. And that was like an astounding thing. But they use this system of the Sarah cycle that had been kind of figured out before by the Babylonians. And so this Sara cycle is really pretty peculiar. So let’s go back a second when we talked about this 27 day cycle of a draconic month, and then this 29 day cycle of a sidereal month. So we have those two numbers in our head, those are not the same numbers, but what we find out. And if I didn’t, I didn’t do enough math, to ever really understand what I’m about to talk about. But it’s pretty simple. There’s common integers, right? So what’s the number that works for both 27 and 29? As you kind of multiply it out? Or does that make sense to you? Yeah. So I guess what happens is, every 18 years, we get to a point where this cycle that we’re talking about this 27 day cycle, and this 29 day cycle actually wrapped themselves back out so that they’re in the exact same positions as they were 18 and a half years before that. So yeah, so this is this thing that happened. So So if, if an eclipse occurs, gosh, and I’m not confident enough to say if like an eclipse like today occurred, I’m not quite sure about lunar eclipses are about how, how that system works, specifically, but let’s say like this, the 2012 total solar eclipse that we viewed in California, that’s the best example for for you. And I did discuss I think, because I’m most concrete about understanding what happened there. Right. So using this Sara cycle, what you can say, is that you could predict that in 18 years, and like eight months, or six months or something, after that, it’s like a really specific amount of time, I’m silly for not having that written down. But 18 years, and so many months after that, it’s going to repeat itself. But it’s gonna repeat itself in sort of an off way. So it’s like 18 hours, eight months and eight hours. And so what happens with that eight hours, right, is the sun can go from being up and visible to where you are on the planet, and viewing the eclipse to position where it’s below the horizon. But in 18 years, and eight months, it is
sending an eclipse out across the land in sort of a predictable way. Does that sound right to you? Yeah, yeah. So. So what happens is, since it’s an eighth RCB, since there’s this eight hour shift that happens every 18 years, what happens is that every I think it’s like 53 years, or it’s like every third 18 year cycle. There’s this thing that I think it’s called an X excellent, exco most some Greek word, that means like a completion or like some kind of cycle completion. But that’s when if you multiply eight by three, right, we get to like close to a full day of hours. And so that’s this prediction that says that the eclipse will happen above you in the same position that happened 53 years before in your lifetime. But that will predict like that period when the eclipse will happen in almost the same position again, on the land. Does that sound right to you? So yeah, so like, let’s say what would Be like if we’re here in the US. And we and we have watched that Eclipse above us in 18 and a half years, it’s going to shift over eight hours in the sky like eight zones, let’s say, Sure, yeah, because it’ll, it’ll move that far ahead. But the next time it’ll be over Europe. It’s a it’s eight hours past that. And then the next time around, it’s almost back to exactly where it was three saros cycles before 318 and a half year periods before, okay, and that’s when you would see it again, in that same spot is the idea. But there’s a lot of other stuff too. So not every Eclipse that we see is part of the same sero series, right? Because we have more than one Eclipse every 18 years, right. So there’s lots of eclipses. And then there’s lots of nuances to each of those eclipses. So there’s like a trend and a saros cycle. So you know, like the Penumbra, the umbra and then like the total eclipse position, right. So So on the outside. I catch up. I have this right. Yeah, I think Penumbra is light shadow. And then Umbra dark shadow, and then total eclipse position, and then kind of fading back out to Umbra of a dark shadow and then Penumbra of the light shadow. And so what I understand is that there’s, gosh, it’s so complicated. I was like, so when an eclipse series starts, it starts near the poles of the earth, either at the North Pole or the South Pole. And that’s why a lot of solar eclipses happen up there. Like I’ve heard about, like solar eclipse, cruise ships. And so with the because there’s so many solar eclipses that that do happen, but they’re not visible on a continental piece. It’s easy to get. So these people go on a cruise ship and then go out to the Arctic or something. view this solar eclipse that happens out there. I think that’s how the one in the Indian Ocean was a couple weeks back, is that people go out to the best spot to see it like we did, we drove down to Redding, even just a few hours south and it was a far better position to see a total eclipse, where we are we from here, we don’t see a partial eclipse because we would be far enough off on the angle parallax that we’d still see the sun as it intersected. That’s a really trippy thing, too. So the position of the eclipse changes right over the land where it is. But there’s this way to predict where that’s going to be. And depending on if it’s an ascending sero series Eclipse or a descending saros series Eclipse.
So how many different Sarah series Eclipse can be happening or happening during the year?
Yeah, that’s a good question. So I think it’s Sarah series of like an eclipse is lifespan. There’s so many, this is a part. There’s so many different pieces of it. So wait, so ask your question again.
So how many different saros series are going on at the same time? Yeah.
Okay, so I think that there are like around 200 going on right now. And I think that there have been 400. There’s some count that goes out to like 400, but a saros series, in total, in total of like the lifespan of Eclipse. So like we were talking about a second ago, they start out in the north pole or the South Pole. And then if the depending on whether they’re an ascending series or a descending Eclipse, like So remember, we were talking about the draconic cycle, as the moon moves past its node from high position past the node and intersects, that’s descending as it moves down. But as it moves up, it’s ascending. And that position, whatever node it’s intersecting is going to be the node that it follows throughout its saros cycle. Because it’s exactly the same position of a planets, or excuse me, of a moon and sun 18 and a half years later, it’s the same note moving across the same position. And so because of this, it’s really predictable how it’s going to move. And so if it starts with the North Pole, it’s going to move south until it moves across the South Pole, and then is no longer and a clip series that’s available for us to view. Because see, like, as we understand it, that, you know, everything’s casting a shadow all the time. And that’s, so when we get an eclipse that we see, it’ll start at the North Pole, then 18 years later, it’ll move I think a little bit south from that position. And then a little further south, still a little further south. Still. There was an article I was looking at, I think it was covering an eclipse app and in 2003, and it was covering that, that Eclipse Sarah cycle from start to finish it kind of outlined it. And so a Sarah cycle is about 1200 years to 1500 years long, the lifespan of the eclipse so every 18 years of that 1500 year period, and eclipse will happen on that cycle as the moon moves through That position of or that node in the draconic cycle. So many cycles. Yeah, tons of cycle. That’s. Yeah. So. So the one that we saw, I think, in in 2012, I think that’s, I think that’s gonna be further south next time. Yes, I think so maybe that’s what’s gonna happen. So. So yeah, well, when we see that one, again, 18, or whatever we are now, 14 years from now, 15 years from now. And another 15 years, it’s going to be like either out in the Indian Ocean, probably, maybe it moves westward. I can’t remember. If it would move westward or eastward, it’ll be in the Indian Ocean, or it’ll be in the Gulf. And it’ll be further south of an eclipse line than where we saw. So it’s really strange how that how that happens to be. I don’t get it or like, so this is the other part that I’m trying to figure out. Because there’s these smaller Eclipse cycles. Not every Eclipse happens in that 18 year period, there, there is a chance that it could happen in between that period, and still be an eclipse that would be part of that cycle. But it depends. This is what I don’t understand. So there’s something that happens that changes. I think specifically for lunar eclipses that causes abnormal abnormalities in the cycle like things like tetrads, which is what we experienced over the last two years. Do you remember that there’s the four total lunar eclipses over North America, in sequence separated by six months, which I think is the least amount of time that’s possible. For for reoccurring eclipses is a six month period? I think that’s because, well, how is that? It’s like six lunations. So it’s not quite six months, but it’s six Full Moon cycles later, is the next time that it would be in a position to be at a node. Okay. I don’t get it, though. But I think that might be part of a different Sara cycle, because those four won’t happen again, in 18 and a half years. Yeah.
Does that make sense? So I don’t know how that works. The tetrad thing is something I don’t really understand this collection of four. Back to back. eclipses is still something I don’t understand. Another part I don’t understand, is Eclipse season. It’s this other term that’s out there that I barely understand, because the eclipses can happen. I think at any day throughout the year. I bet I think that there are periods where there are more common to happen. And I’m not quite sure why that is. But in my life, I think I’ve only really observed lunar eclipses near the equinox, or near the position of lunar equinox. So like, if you look like during the tetrad it was all like April to October and then late March to September. Like it was all it was all separated so that it was all really close to what would be the the autumnal and vernal equinox. And then for solar eclipses that we’ve seen. We’ve seen a lot of those during the solstice, like so we saw that one at the end of May. I remember seeing another one was in high school. That was in June. I remember we went out. When I was in college, I met up with Robert. And we went out to Williams to watch a lunar eclipse in December, where you and I went out to watch a lunar eclipse in December once. That was a few years ago. That’s back in 2000. That was December 2011, I think Yeah. And we drove up to Marys peak to watch to watch that. Yeah. And we I remember seeing it with you. Yeah, I remember watching it turn dark and all those other cars out there. And I remember being freezing cold. It was like four in the morning with that. Eclipse came out, man. It’s too chilly. But yeah, that was a cool, I think pretty. I think it was a total eclipse or real close to total eclipse. That was really cool to see too. Yeah. Yeah. Real strange. So Gosh, I hope I didn’t make it just way more confusing to try and think about, he’s like 18 and a half. there’s a there’s a lot to it. Yeah, even just understand that you’re conic month and that the moon. Like I wondered for years. Why is it that the Moon and the Earth? Why don’t we not have eclipses all the time or constantly? I mean, like, you know, you just think it would it would have I think the earth shadow would be large enough that at some point when it passes around in opposition to us, it would hit the shadow. But it doesn’t because of this, this 5.7 or five and a half degree tilt on the axis of the ecliptic line that the moon kind of travels through as it moves around. And it’s a really strange sort of intricate Well, it’s not that intricate. It’s really simple. It’s sort of like a hula hoop as you like kind of like let it on the ground and sort of wobbles around. Or like at the top of the lid is it wobbles around on the countertop until it stops and sort of wobbles around in the same way across the ecliptic line. So right now the moon’s in Libra, and that’s where we had an eclipse. So the the node position would be there. But the next month because of this kind of two day gap between the deconnick 27 day period, and the 29 day sidereal period, it just kind of rolls by two days each month, and then by four days, the next month, you know, and then by six, and then by eight. And so that’s kind of why it gets off. And then I think that’s probably why. I don’t know, it’s probably why it takes such a long time to get back to the position where you could have an eclipse again, but it was cool. So some of the eclipse stuff that we’ve been trying to follow. And man, the cycles are so tough, pretty tough. We’re gonna learn about Yeah, we should we should get into more Eclipse stuff in the future. I’m still trying to figure out what like the metonic cycle I was trying to figure out. Like, I was like, What did the metonic cycle mean, when we were trying to figure that out? That was a 19 year cycle. And that was, I was trying to sort this out my head, that’s only to figure out the period of a true year around the sun as a 364.5 to get a period. That’s like that proof of how long a year is, because that’s the common integer. What does that become? Oh, yeah, of, of a synoptic month and a sidereal month. I think that’s a combination of that. That’s why we use it. Yeah, so that kind of reconciles the lunar calendar period, and the solar calendar period, so that it kind of tries to keep track with those lunar calendars that we talked about the sort of get off with their lunations, because they happen at different times, you know, you’d all of a sudden start having your summer be way into fall, if you kind of stayed with the wrong calendar for too long. So that’s why they put in like leap months into those lunar calendars. And so that’s why the metonic cycle is, is something that we talked about, but then the Sarah cycle is just for eclipses, and just for the iconic nodes, and the positioning of the moon, and on the node, and the Earth and the Sun. So strange how that works. But there’s so much more to learn about that stuff. Oh, we should talk about a nice note that we got. Yeah. Thank you very much, Jason. That was really cool.
Yeah, that is two different continents that we’ve gotten comments from Hey, in 10 episodes. Nice job Episode 10. And we’ve already got I know, presence on three continents.
Pretty cool. Yeah. Let’s bench for the encouragement and cool comment.
Yeah, definitely. still find in our podcast legs. Shoot, I’m just, I can’t talk about Sarah cycles. I don’t understand it. Yeah, I have like a high school education and astronomy. So I appreciate that anyone from somewhere else is listening me talk about what I wanted to look at in the night sky. Pretty cool. So yeah, definitely keep sending in some messages. That’s pretty fun. Oh, send in like topics or like things that we should try and discuss here? Because I’m probably Oh, yeah,
please feel welcome to ask questions or suggest things that you want to hear about. Oh, figure it out way faster. Yeah. So
yeah, Jace was talking about, recall the last episode viewing cannabis. And it was we talked a little bit about our trip while we were in Hawaii, getting to see cannabis for the first time looking south a serious and seeing like a star that you could just never have seen before. And he dropped a couple lines here because he’s in Australia, right. And so he was, I guess, I just used to live there. And not in the Northern Hemisphere. So he’s kind of commenting on that idea of, you know, how we have our northern northern constellations, Northern Hemisphere sky, and then the southern hemisphere sky, and just how we both don’t really get to see the other person’s sky. You know, we don’t get to experience that. So we like myself. I always wonder like, what is cannabis like or what is like, I don’t know, just Centaurus like, what does that look like? Or what’s like the Southern Cross look like? Or what’s the Magellanic Clouds look like? any of that stuff I’ve never got to see. And I think it’d be really cool. And then likewise, what he was saying in this comment is that he sort of thought about the North northern sky, which I maybe I don’t think for granted, I think it’s great. It’s really beautiful. But I you know, he was like, I wonder what the Big Dipper looks like. I’ve never seen the Big Dipper. So that’d be really cool. To get to like, see this thing that’s so talked about and experienced by everybody. It seems it’s the only thing people know in the sky. He could see Orion from there. But and Scorpio and a few other things. But like, yeah, I think it’s like, you know, the most popular most well known thing in in the night sky, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. And that’s something that they don’t get to experience down there. That’s really interesting. Yeah. Cool to hear about and yeah, thanks for. Thanks for sending that in. Jason. I appreciate it. But yeah, I think that wraps up just about everything we were going to talk about on this episode of the night sky podcast, I think. Yeah, comments. Oh, you guys. Thanks for sending in a comment. What was I gonna say? Yeah, rate review and subscribe this podcast or re subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or whatever you guys use. Appreciate the comment. I think anything like that works out really well. But yeah, we’re trying to figure out stuff to do from Episode 10 and on with this and we want to keep doing it we want to do more consistently. Yeah, and but we want to just like make it interesting and dig into the stuff that’s cool or make it more personal or you know more like that like the experience of doing skywatching stuff that we do and and kind of share that maybe everybody listening to this knows way more about astronomy than like what closes just as about what you did. So let us know but on behalf of Marina Hanson, my name is Billy Newman, I want to say thank you very much for listening to this episode of the night sky podcast.