{"id":313577,"date":"2026-02-27T20:38:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T20:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/313577\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T20:38:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T20:38:15","slug":"the-total-lunar-eclipse-on-march-3-will-be-the-last-until-new-years-eve-2028","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/313577\/","title":{"rendered":"The total lunar eclipse on March 3 will be the last until New Year’s Eve 2028"},"content":{"rendered":"

Enjoy the total lunar eclipse on March 3<\/a> because it will be the last for a long while.<\/p>\n

Observers across East Asia, Australia, the Pacific and western North America will see March’s full moon \u2014 known as the “Worm Moon” \u2014 pass through Earth’s shadow, turning a reddish-copper color for 58 spell-binding minutes.<\/p>\n

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However, once the moon emerges from Earth’s umbra \u2014 the deepest part of Earth’s shadow \u2014 there will be no further total lunar eclipses for almost three years. A lunar lull will commence and won’t end until a neatly-timed total lunar eclipse<\/a> on New Year’s Eve 2028-2029. Here’s why \u2014 and why 2029 will be a year marking not just the end of a drought, but of three spectacular “blood moon<\/a>” total lunar eclipses.<\/p>\n

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Lunar eclipses: total vs. partial vs. penumbral<\/p>\n

A lunar eclipse<\/a> occurs when the full moon passes through Earth’s ever-present shadow. A cone-like shadow extending from the night side of the planet, it has two parts: a lighter outer penumbra and a darker central umbra. That’s because the sun is larger than Earth, so Earth blocks its light in different ways.<\/p>\n

Total lunar eclipse: when the whole of the moon<\/a> passes through the umbra, cutting off all direct sunlight from reaching the lunar surface. The only light that can reach it is filtered through Earth’s atmosphere<\/a>, which scatters short wavelengths of light and bends longer red wavelengths inward. The result is the “blood moon.”<\/p>\n

Partial lunar eclipse: when a portion of the moon passes through the umbra, cutting off all direct sunlight from reaching some of the lunar surface. The result is the sight of Earth’s shadow moving across the full moon, turning some of it a dull grey.<\/p>\n

Penumbral lunar eclipse: when none of the moon passes through the umbra, just the outer penumbra, causing the moon to lose some of its brightness.<\/p>\n

Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!<\/p>\n

A total lunar eclipse includes all of these phases: penumbral, partial, and total, a process that can take about five hours.<\/p>\n

March 3’s total lunar eclipse<\/p>\n

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Lunar totality will last 58 minutes on March 3, 2026. (Image credit: Laurie LaPorte via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The March 3, 2026, total lunar eclipse will see the moon spend 58 minutes and 18 seconds fully inside Earth’s umbra. It has an umbral magnitude of about 1.15, <\/a>meaning the moon just passes full inside Earth’s shadow. Total lunar eclipses with magnitudes<\/a> only slightly above 1 tend to appear lighter copper or reddish in tone rather than a very dark crimson, because the moon does not travel deeply through the shadow.<\/p>\n

That’s a mere detail; this total lunar eclipse is sure to be a dramatic event, turning a night sky bleached to blue by the full “Worm Moon” to a very dark sky, with stars appearing around the full moon<\/a>. The entire event, including the long partial phases before and after totality, will last five hours and 38 minutes.<\/p>\n

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After March 3, the moon won’t fully enter Earth’s umbra again until the very end of 2028.<\/p>\n

Why will total lunar eclipses disappear for a few years?<\/p>\n

The no-totality gap after March 2026 is not unusual. Total lunar eclipses require precise alignments, far more so than partial or penumbral events. That’s because the moon’s orbit is tilted by about five degrees relative to Earth’s orbit around the sun<\/a>, which means most full moons pass above or below Earth’s shadow \u2014 the reason why there isn’t an eclipse every month. In fact, lunar eclipses can only occur during eclipse seasons, brief windows about six months apart when the sun is near one of the moon’s orbital nodes. But even then, totality is not guaranteed.<\/p>\n

During many eclipse seasons, the moon merely skims Earth’s penumbra and umbra. Partial eclipses \u2014 when some of the full moon enters the umbra \u2014 can be striking events, but at no point does the lunar surface look reddish. Penumbral eclipses are even subtler, with the lunar surface merely dulled. Compared to a total lunar eclipse, partial and penumbral events lack the drama of totality.<\/p>\n

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There will be a deep partial lunar eclipse on Aug. 28, 2026. This photograph was captured on Sept. 7, 2025 from Vallejos. M\u00e1laga, Spain. (Image credit: Javier Zayas Photography via Getty Images)What happens to lunar eclipses after March 2026?<\/p>\n

After March 3, 2026, there will be no occasions when the moon becomes fully immersed in Earth’s umbra for 34 months. Eclipse seasons continue, and lunar eclipses still occur, but none will be total. Here’s the sequence of partial and penumbral events to expect from 2026 to 2028.<\/p>\n

Aug. 28, 2026 \u2014 deep partial lunar eclipse (93% of the moon enters the umbra)Feb. 20, 2027 \u2014 penumbral lunar eclipseJuly 18, 2027 \u2014 penumbral lunar eclipseAug. 17, 2027 \u2014 penumbral lunar eclipseJan. 12, 2028 \u2014 shallow partial lunar eclipseJuly 6, 2028 \u2014 partial lunar eclipse (39% of the moon enters the umbra)When total lunar eclipses return<\/p>\n

The drought finally ends at the close of 2028, when the slow westward drift of the moon’s orbital nodes brings full moons back into deeper alignment with Earth’s shadow. What follows will be a tetrad of three total lunar eclipses in a 12-month period.<\/p>\n

December 31, 2028 \u2014 total lunar eclipse (totality for 71 minutes as seen from Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia, Canada and Alaska).June 26, 2029 \u2014 total lunar eclipse (totality for 102 minutes as seen from the Americas, western Europe and Africa).December 20, 2029 \u2014 total lunar eclipse (totality for 54 minutes as seen from North and South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia).<\/p>\n

Total lunar eclipses are not rare, but they are episodic, appearing in clusters when the geometry lines up. Are these night-side events worth traveling the world to see? Perhaps not \u2014 particularly compared to the geographically much more limited total solar eclipses<\/a> \u2014 but any one location can go many years without one. One thing’s for sure about total lunar eclipses: every skywatcher should always know when and where the next one is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Enjoy the total lunar eclipse on March 3 because it will be the last for a long while.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,141,145],"class_list":["post-313577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}