I have seen a full moon 3 times that came up red. What makes it red?

Question

As it rises it gets orange, then yellow. Eventually it is white. I know it has to do with the electromagnetic spectrum and red is the longest wave length. What conditions make it appear red?

Answer 1

The same reason why sunsets are red. Low in the horizon, the light coming from the moon has to travel through a lot more atmosphere (and pollutants) before it reaches your eyes. The other colours start to get filtered out. As the moon continues to rise, it will look brighter and whiter because the light travels through less atmosphere so less of it gets filtered out.
The red moon on the horizon is usually most noticeable on or near the full moon phase (as it was yesterday).

Answer 2

I'm an astronomer so I looked up info in our observatory database for you !

Actually, it's not just during the Harvest Moon that this happens. You can see this on any full or nearly full moon as the moon is rising. And it's for the same reason that sunsets are red and orange. The sun is shining all of the colors of the rainbow on to the moon, and the moon is reflecting all of those colors pretty evenly.

When the moon is low, the reflected sunlight has to travel through more air than when the moon is high in the sky. Colors at the blue and violet end of the rainbow (spectrum) are easily scattered or bent (refracted) by the atmosphere. (That's why the sky is blue: you're seeing blue sunlight scattered in every direction.) So it's the colors at the red and orange end of the spectrum that pass through the atmosphere and into your eyes.

The following picture links I found online to give you a visual of the answer .

Answer 3

Why an eclipse paints the moon red
Earth’s atmosphere plays a role in lunar spectacle

Jan. 5, 2001 - When Earth passes between the sun and the moon, you’d figure that the moon would disappear, right? Wrong. Even seasoned lunar eclipse watchers might be surprised to learn how bright the moon is supposed to be.

When the moon is fully covered by Earth’s shadow, it will:

A. Fade to black

B. Shine on, shine on

C. Turn into gooey melted brie

D. None of the above

Moonbeams are no more than reflected sunbeams. But even without direct sunlight, when the Earth intercedes between our two bright celestial neighbors and blocks the sun from shining directly on the moon, the moon still shines, kind of, during an eclipse. The answer is D.

The reason for redness
So why can you still see the moon during a total eclipse? It’s because some sunlight is still hitting it, and for that you can thank our atmosphere. Particles in the atmosphere cause the light rays coming from the sun to bounce around. Some are refracted, or bent. They get redirected through the atmosphere and out around behind Earth and onto the moon, which is blocked only from direct sunlight.

Thus, the moon is still visible in the sky. However, the refracted rays of sunlight doing the illuminating turn the moon a strange reddish. Or copper. Maybe rust.

That’s because of all the bouncing around those rays had to go through on their way through the atmosphere. The more atmosphere that sunlight travels through, the more the blue and green parts of the spectrum are scattered. That’s why sunrises and sunsets are yellow and pink and red. The low early or late sun, hitting the atmosphere at a shallow angle, has to fight through more atmospheric particles on its way to your eye, and the reddish wavelengths get through better.

The same thing happens to sunlight refracted onto the moon during an eclipse. The sunlight hits the atmosphere on the sides of Earth at a shallow angle and is carried through a lot of atmosphere until it’s redirected out onto the moon “hiding” from direct sunlight. The red end of the spectrum is all that can get through that much interference. So the moon in total eclipse appears as an eerie, glowing copper ball in the sky.

How does it rate?
It may sound odd, but lunar eclipses are actually rated by their brightness. On the Danjon scale (Andre Danjon, French astronomer) a moon you can barely see is a zero. A bright copper-red or orange moon during total eclipse rates a 4.

Total lunar eclipses tend to be brighter when the atmosphere is relatively clear of volcanic dust. A dirty atmosphere blocks more sunlight and dims the eclipse. So does the weather, and it’s not just whether the weather is cloudy overhead. The weather around the globe counts, too. The cloudier the global atmosphere, the less sunlight makes it around to the moon, and the dimmer a show we get.

Unlike a quickie solar eclipse, which flashes past in a maximum of 7 1/2 minutes, the lunar variety happens at a more leisurely pace. The shadow made by Earth as it blocks the sun is 6,480 miles wide, out where the moon crosses through it.

The moon itself is only 2,160 miles wide, and it’s traveling about 2,300 mph. So it’s roughly three hours from the time the moon first touches the shadow, known as the umbra, until the last part of the moon passes out of it. The middle third of the journey is the part of the eclipse that’s “total.”

Don’t give yourself a neck cramp trying to spot the precise moment of the event’s start or finish: Sunlight hitting the rest of the moon will keep the leading edge of shadow from showing up distinctly.

For the best view of a lunar eclipse, try binoculars. They bring you in closer, but preserve a wide enough field of view to see the whole show. And don’t worry about looking at it directly with the naked eye. That’s only a problem with the radiation streaming from a partial solar eclipse.

Answer 4

A couple of things can make that happen. If there is a lunar eclipse, the moon will generally appear reddish; also a moon that is low on the horizon often appears gold or reddish. The reason is essentially the same in both cases - the sun's light is striking the moon and/or being reflected back through more atmosphere, so you see mostly the longer, reddish waves of visible light, while the shorter ones (toward the purple end of the spectrum) get filtered out.

Answer 5

The blood of 1,000 virgin sacraficed to the moon makes it red.

Now for real:

Have you ever wondered why the moon is more orange or yellow in color when it first rises at night. This effect is caused by the atmosphere of the earth. The reason for the orange color is due to the scattering of light by the atmosphere. When the moon is near the horizon, the moonlight must pass through much more atmosphere than when the moon is directly overhead. By the time the moonlight reaches your eyes, the blue, green, and purple pieces of visible light have been scattered away by air molecules. That's why you only see yellow, orange, or red.

The moon can have an orange color at any time of the year. Sometimes the moon appears orange even when it's directly overhead. This occurs when there's a lot of dust, smoke, or pollution in the atmosphere. The size of those particles will determine the type of color you will see.

Answer 6

These are the red waves which have the longest wave length. It is a kind of similar phenomenon as we see in the rising and sinking sun. Sun apart from many other functions had the funtion of reminding us about time while the moon was created to give us dates and calnder comprising of 12 months

Answer 7

The room is normally "white" from the suns rays reflecting off of it (there is nothing between the moon and sun in space). When the moon is "red" there is usually a lot of particles floating in the atmoshpere, when the "white" moon light passes through them it turns the light "red".

Answer 8

Dust in the air creates filtration effects, causing it to appear red.

Answer 9

Atmosphere.

Answer 10

Hi, and Horrorfan is right, except were I live, near a major city...Pollution is the answer. I wish it was otherwise!