‘Blood moon’ will be entirely observable from the central Atlantic westward to eastern Australia. ‘Blood Moon’ happens when Earth casts its shadow on the moon resulting to a reddish-orange colour of the lunar surface.
Being part of four lunar eclipses in 2014-15, ‘Blood Moon’ is also known as “tetrad”.
According to Fred Espenak, NASA eclipse expert, “tetrad” is a series of eclipse with all eclipses being visible partially or entirely across the United States. Espenak explained that that the April 15 eclipses is part of 9 sets of tetrads for the 21st century. The first set of these eclipses already happened in 2013.
Interestingly, the last tetrad happened way back in 16th century.
It was noted that ‘blood moon’ is viewed as a supernatural occurrence by some religions rather an astronomical event. Christian beliefs claim that the blood moon prophecy hinted the second coming of Jesus.
According to the article, the ‘Blood Moon’ became of religious importance because it concurs with major Jewish feast days. The 2014 ‘Blood Moon’ happening on April 15 and Oct. 8 concur with the Jewish Passover and feast of the Tabernacle. In 2015, the ‘Blood Moon’ eclipse happening on April 4 and Sept 28 concur with the same Jewish holidays.
With this, the event is associated to a prophecy from the book of Genesis and the Jewish Bible’s book of Joel.
“The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come.” – Joel 3:4
