On Tuesday, April 15th, sky watchers around the world were delighted with the ‘blood moon’ they were lucky enough to witness in the early morning hours. The total lunar eclipse reached its peak when a red-orange glow cast over the moon, a product of sunsets and sunrises being reflected off the moon’s surface. As this total lunar eclipse occurred around midnight, many people were unable to witness it for themselves. However, it marked the first of the coming tetrad, which will occur between now and 2015.
The last tetrad occurred in 2003, and this name describes the phenomenon when four total lunar eclipses occur in a row, with no partial lunar eclipses in-between.
The tetrad has sparked conversation between both scientific and religious groups. Since the Earth’s orbit changes at an extremely slow pace, the tetrads are not evenly spaced out and this results in drastic changes in the amount of tetrads during a certain timeframe. According to scientists, there will be 8 tetrads in this century alone, whereas between 1582 and 1908 there were none. Due to this, the scientific side of this phenomenon believes that the tetrad is merely the product of how the universe and our elliptical orbital pathways work. In contrast to this, many believe that this tetrad is a sign of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. A few Bibles make mention of a ‘blood moon’ as in the Book of Revelation 6:12 which states, “And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood.” Overall, the response to the blood moon sighting was of delight, amazement, and awe. While some regretted not staying up to witness the beauty of the total lunar eclipse for themselves, others were able to let them see what went on early Tuesday morning with collections of their own photos they captured. So fear not, if you succumbed to sleep Monday night or thought that the blood moon was something you could check out on social media, three more will be radiant in its glory by 2015. The blood moon is not a particularly common occurrence, and its beauty in person far outweighs it through pictures.
