Very early lunar eclipse Friday with a celebration at the Discovery Center

There’s a total lunar eclipse happening early – very, very early – on Friday, March 14, and it’s the first one visible here since 2022.

From New Hampshire’s point of view the moon will enter the edge of Earth’s shadow starting just at midnight Thursday and spend hours getting progressively darker and redder with totality – the period that it is completely within our shadow – lasting from 2:26 to 3:31 a.m.

To celebrate, the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center will host an eclipse-watching party starting at midnight that overlaps with another geeky event: Pi Day. Friday is March 14 or 3/14, during which people can also have fun with the mathematical constant pi, which has the value of 3.14 plus a bit.

The free event is called Umbra and Pizza on Pi Day – umbra being the official term for a planet’s shadow. It will include watching the eclipse through telescopes, doing activities and puzzles related to pi (which is the ratio of a circle’s circumference and ratio and which also shows up in a myriad of unexpected mathematical places) plus free pizza.

For details, check the website starhop.com/lunar-eclipse-pi-day.

Like most places, New Hampshire sees a full lunar eclipse every two or three years. Lunar eclipses, when the Earth gets between the sun and the moon, are much more common than solar eclipses, when the moon gets between the sun and the Earth. That’s mostly because each one is visible to far more people.

A lunar eclipse can be watched by anybody who can see the full moon, roughly half the planet. A solar eclipse can only be seen by people within the small area covered by the moon’s shadow, much smaller than New Hampshire, for the short period that it travels across the surface.

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David Brooks can be reached at dbrooks@cmonitor.com.

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