Nov. 8 Total Lunar Eclipse Is Second of Two 2022 Total Lunar Eclipses

Summary: The Nov. 8 total lunar eclipse is the second of two 2022 total lunar eclipses and the fourth and last eclipse in the year's lineup of four eclipses.

Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022, total lunar eclipse details; credit: Eclipse map/figure/table/predictions courtesy of Fred Espenak, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, from eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov: no copyright, via NASA Eclipse Web Site

The Nov. 8 total lunar eclipse is the second of two 2022 total lunar eclipses and the fourth and last eclipse in the year's four-eclipse lineup of two partial solar eclipses and two total lunar eclipses.

Continentally, the Tuesday, Nov. 8, total lunar eclipse favors parts of northeastern Asia, a slice of Australia's easternmost bulge, easternmost and northernmost Europe and northern and western North America with all eclipse visibility, according to the NASA Eclipse Web Site. The Russian Far East, northeasternmost China and much of Japan qualify for northeastern Asia's all eclipse visibility. Arctic Ocean islands join northernmost Europe's Norwegian Svalbard Archipelago and much of easternmost Europe's Novaya Zemlya Archipelago in eligibility for all eclipse visibility. All eclipse visibility is available to Northern America's western and much of central and northern Canada; northern Greenland; and the western United States. Both Alaska and Hawaii experience all eclipse visibility.

Oceanically, the Tuesday, Nov. 8, total lunar eclipse favors the entire Arctic Ocean with all eclipse visibility. A small part of the Southern Ocean and much of the central, northeastern and western Pacific Ocean are eligible for all eclipse visibility.

Africa is the only continent that is excluded from eclipse visibility.

Onset of a penumbral eclipse (P1), in which first exterior contact takes place between the moon and Earth's penumbra, the fainter, outer region of Earth's shadow, signals the start of November's total lunar eclipse. The penumbral eclipse starts Tuesday, Nov. 8, 08:02:17 Universal Time (3:02 a.m. Eastern Standard Time).

The event's partial umbral eclipse begins with the first exterior contact between the moon and Earth's umbra (U1), the dark, inner portion of Earth's shadow, initiates the event's partial umbral eclipse. The partial umbral eclipse begins 09:09:12 UT (4:09 a.m. EST).

First interior contact between the moon and Earth's umbra (U2) initiates the event's total lunar eclipse. The Tuesday, Nov. 8, total lunar eclipse starts at 10:16:39 UT (5:16 a.m. EST).

The instant of greatest eclipse's closest lunar passage to the umbra's axis represents the eclipse's maximum phase. The Tuesday, Nov. 8, event attains its instant of greatest eclipse at 10:59:08.8 UT (5:59 a.m. EST).

The last exterior contact between the moon and Earth's umbra (U3) terminates the event's total lunar eclipse. The Tuesday, Nov. 8, total lunar eclipse ends at 11:41:37 UT (6:41 a.m. EST).

The last exterior contact between the moon and Earth's umbra (U4) closes the partial umbral eclipse. The partial umbral eclipse finishes Tuesday, Nov. 8, at 12:49:03 UT (7:49 a.m. EST).

The penumbral eclipse ends with the last exterior contact between the moon and Earth's penumbra (P4). The event's penumbral eclipses closes Monday, May 16, at 13:56:08 UT (8:56 a.m. EST).

The NASA Eclipse Web Site includes eclipse durations calculated by NASA astrophysicist, now retired, Fred Espenak. The Tuesday, Nov. 8, lunar event's penumbral eclipse had a duration of 05 hours 53 minutes 51 seconds. The event's partial umbral eclipse endured for 03 hours 39 minutes 50 seconds. The event's total umbral eclipse lasted for 01 hour 24 minutes 58 seconds.

On his EclipseWise website, Fred Espenak locates the moon in Aries the Ram constellation during the Tuesday, Nov. 8, lunar eclipse. The northern celestial hemisphere constellation neighbors with Pisces the Fishes constellation to the west and Taurus the Bull to the east.

Espenak's EclipseWise also situates the event's instant of greatest eclipse as preceding lunar apogee, or farthest center-to-center distance between Earth and its moon, by 5.8 days. The month's lunar apogee took place Monday, Nov. 14, at 06:42 UTC (1:42 a.m. EST), at a distance of 404,923 kilometers, according to computer programmer and computer-aided design (CAD) software company Autodesk co-founder John Walker's Fourmilab Switzerland website.

The Tuesday, Nov. 8, total lunar eclipse occurs as the second of two total lunar eclipses in 2022 and as the fourth of the year's four eclipses. The year's first total lunar eclipse took place Monday, May 16, as the year's second eclipse. The May total lunar eclipse's predecessor, the partial solar eclipse of Saturday, April 30, initiated the year's eclipse lineup as the year's first eclipse and as the first of the year's two partial solar eclipses. The year's second partial solar eclipse took place Tuesday, Oct. 25, as the year's third of four eclipses.

The takeaways for the Nov. 8 total lunar eclipse as the second of two 2022 total lunar eclipses are that November's lunar eclipse favors only one ocean, the Arctic Ocean, with all eclipse visibility; that the November event's continental all-eclipse visibility extends to extreme parts of Asia, Australia and Europe and to parts of North America; that Africa is the only continent with no eclipse visibility; and that November's total lunar eclipse numbers as the fourth, closing eclipse of 2022.

Earth's orientation, as viewed from the moon's center during the Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022, total lunar eclipse's greatest eclipse: SockPuppetForTomruen at English Wikipedia, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits

Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022, total lunar eclipse details; credit: Eclipse map/figure/table/predictions courtesy of Fred Espenak, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, from eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov: no copyright, via NASA Eclipse Web Site @ https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/LEplot/LEplot2001/LE2022Nov08T.pdf

Earth's orientation, as viewed from the moon's center during the Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022, total lunar eclipse's greatest eclipse: SockPuppetForTomruen at English Wikipedia, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lunar_eclipse_from_moon-2022Nov08.png

For further information:

Espenak, Fred. "Key to Figures of Lunar Eclipses." EclipseWise > Lunar Eclipses > LE Help.
Available @ http://eclipsewise.com/lunar/LEhelp/LEpingkey.html

Espenak, Fred. "Total Lunar Eclipse of 2022 Nov 08." EclipseWise > Lunar Eclipses > Recent and Upcoming Lunar Eclipses > Decade Tables of Lunar Eclipses > Lunar Eclipses: 2021-2030.
Available @ http://eclipsewise.com/lunar/LEprime/2001-2100/LE2022Nov08Tprime.html

Espenak, Fred. "Total Lunar Eclipse of 2022 Nov 08." NASA Eclipse Web Site > Lunar Eclipses > Decade Long Tables of Past and Future Lunar Eclipses > Lunar Eclipses: 2021-2030.
Available @ https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/LEplot/LEplot2001/LE2022Nov08T.pdf

Espenak, Fred; and Jean Meeus. "Explanation of Lunar Eclipse Figures." NASA Eclipse Web Site.
Available @ https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/LEcat5/figure.html#

Marriner, Derdriu. "May 16 Total Lunar Eclipse Is First of Two 2022 Total Lunar Eclipses." Earth and Space News. Wednesday, May 4, 2022.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2022/05/may-16-total-lunar-eclipse-is-first-of.html

Time and Date. "November 8, 2022 Total Lunar Eclipse (Blood Moon)." Time and Date > Sun & Moon > Eclipses.
Available @ https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/lunar/2022-november-8

Walker, John. "Lunar Perigee and Apogee Calculator." Fourmilab Switzerland > Earth and Moon Viewer and Solar System Explorer. Available @ https://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/pacalc.html