CHANDRA GRAHANA | EPIC EVENT AFTER 1600 YEARS | HISTORY REPEATS AGAIN |

A lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes directly behind Earth and into its shadow.^[1] This can occur only when the Sun, Earth, and the Moon are aligned (in syzygy) exactly or very closely so, with the planet in between. Hence, a lunar eclipse can occur only on the night of a full moon. The type and length of an eclipse depend on the Moon's proximity to either node of its orbit.

During a total lunar eclipse, Earth completely blocks direct sunlight from reaching the Moon. The only light reflected from the lunar surface has been refracted by Earth's atmosphere. This light appears reddish for the same reason that a sunset or sunrise does: the Rayleigh scattering of bluer light. Due to this reddish color, a totally eclipsed Moon is sometimes called a blood moon.

Unlike a solar eclipse, which can be viewed only from a certain relatively small area of the world, a lunar eclipse may be viewed from anywhere on the night side of Earth. A total lunar eclipse lasts a few hours, whereas a total solar eclipse lasts only a few minutes as viewed from any given place, due to the smaller size of the Moon's shadow. Also unlike solar eclipses, lunar eclipses are safe to view without any eye protection or special precautions, as they are dimmer than the full Moon.

Certain lunar eclipses have been referred to as "blood moons" in popular articles but this is not a scientifically-recognized term.^[14] This term has been given two separate, but overlapping, meanings.

The first, and simpler, meaning relates to the reddish color a totally eclipsed Moon takes on to observers on Earth.^[15] As sunlight penetrates the atmosphere of Earth, the gaseous layer filters and refracts the rays in such a way that the green to violet wavelengths on the visible spectrum scatter more strongly than the red, thus giving the Moon a reddish cast.^[16]

The second meaning of "blood moon" has been derived from this apparent coloration by two fundamentalist Christian pastors, Mark Blitz and John Hagee.^[14][17] They claimed that the 2014–15 "lunar tetrad" of four lunar eclipses coinciding with the feasts of Passover and Tabernacles matched the "moon turning to blood" described in the Book of Joel of the Hebrew Bible.^[17] This tetrad was claimed to herald the Second Coming of Christ and the Rapture as described in the Book of Revelations on the date of the first of the eclipses in this sequence on April 15, 2014.^[