‘Blood Moon’ rising: High Desert views eclipse

Move aside, stars: Sunriver’s Oregon Observatory was ready for something you can’t see every night: a very special moon with an odd nickname.

“So the ‘blood moon’ is referring to the fact that the moon is going to turn red,” Oregon Observatory Manager Bob Grossfeld said Monday.

The phenomena happens when the sun, the Earth and the moon are in a straight line –the proper name is a lunar eclipse.

“A lunar eclipse is when the Earth casts a shadow onto the moon,” Grossfeld said. “This is an unusual one, because it’s what called a total eclipse. We’re going to bend the light from the sun around the Earth.”

Clouds that moved into much of the area Monday afternoon were parting around nightfall, boosting the odds of great viewing conditions – and indeed, much of the area got to view much of the phenomenon, playing hide-and-seek with the clouds.

Grossfeld said North Americans typically view full lunar eclipses every couple of years, but he also said there’s been times in history when humans didn’t see a single one for hundreds of years.

Luckily, over the next year and a half, we’re getting spoiled.

“We’ll have one tonight of course, then one in October, then next year we have one in April and then one in September,” Grossfeld said. “So we will have four total lunar eclipses, so that’s kind of unusual.”

You could catch the action Monday night around 11 p.m. Grossfeld said people would see the full effect shortly after midnight.

The Oregon Observatory hosted a free viewing party Monday night at its location off River Road in Sunriver from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m.

“You see it in a book, and that’s cool, but when you see it in real life, it’s totally different,” Grossfeld said.