‘Blood Red’ Lunar Eclipse of 2025 Does Not Disappoint

The much-anticipated total lunar eclipse of 2025 was visible across the US to those of us who were not besieged by cloud cover.

Sedalia saw its share of those clouds early on, but they eventually sailed away to the northeast by around 2 a.m. Friday, revealing a dim, but beautiful blood red moon.

Before and after the eclipse, the moon was super bright with no cloud cover.

According to Christopher S. Baird, author and associate professor of physics at West Texas A&M University, the moon is actually quite dim, compared to other astronomical bodies.

“The moon only seems bright in the night sky because it is so close to the earth and because the trees, houses, and fields around you are so dark at night. In fact, the moon is one of the least reflective objects in the solar system,” Baird said.

The DSCOVER spacecraft captured a single photograph of the moon and the earth (shown below).  Both the earth and the moon are illuminated by the same amount of sunlight coming from the same angle in this particular photo.

The above photo was taken by the DSCOVER spacecraft on July 16, 2015. Public Domain Image, source: NASA/NOAA

The albedo, or reflectivity, of the moon is about 12 percent, while the Earth is about 31 percent.

By contrast, the albedo of Venus is about 75 percent, and is highly visible in the western evening sky.

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If you missed this early morning lunar eclipse, you will have to wait until March 3, 2026 to see the next one.

A lunar eclipse occurs when the earth passes between the sun and the moon, and the earth casts a shadow on the moon, with totality lasting about an hour. We see red because the sunlight that does reach the moon passes through our atmosphere first, and the result is similar to a setting sun that sometimes turns reddish when there’s lots of dust in the air from wildfires, for instance.

Red light has a longer wavelength and “gets through” more easily than the other colors that are filtered out, if that makes sense.

During totality, the stars became a lot more visible early Friday morning due to not being wiped out by the glare of the full moon.

The whole process takes about three-and-a-half hours.