BBC News School Report @ LCS

We started 2018 off with what is known as a ‘Super-Blue-Blood-moon’ The concept of a super blue blood moon is many things. For starters we need to know all the facts. This title is divided into specific parts about what the moon looked like for different people in different parts of the world. In Australia, Asia and some parts of the US and Eastern Europe saw what is known as a super blue blood moon which is a lunar eclipse.

• Super because it was 7% closer to Earth and 15% brighter
• Blue because we had a full moon twice in one month
• Blood because the earth acted as a shadow over the moon.

This event was known as a Lunar eclipse and is very rare-especially for us in the UK as we rarely see it happen because we aren’t in the moons path, but we did see the blood moon in 2015. How does a Lunar eclipse work?

It happens when the earth acts as a shadow over the moon, it blocks all sunlight except for the red wavelengths that get refracted through Earth’s atmosphere giving the moon a red hue. But this is only during a full lunar eclipse which happens rarely because the moon has a tilt of 5ᵒ which means that every time the moons goes behind the earth we don’t get an eclipse. We conducted an interview to see if people knew what a Lunar eclipse was and if they knew how it worked here are our questions and results;

Do you know what a Lunar eclipse is?

• Yes: 6
• Maybe: 0
• No: 0

Do you know the science behind a Lunar eclipse?

• Yes: 4
• Maybe: 0
• No: 2

Have you ever seen a Lunar eclipse?

• Yes: 4
• Maybe: 1
• No: 1

Have you seen any other eclipse?

• Yes: 6
• Maybe: 0
• No: 0

As you can see, many people know what a Lunar eclipse is but don’t know the science behind it. We also asked people about super and blue moons but no one knew what they were. Therefore we think that becoming educated about our universe is very important. A Super moon is when the moon looks very large compared to normal and A Blue moon is when there are two moons in one calendar month.