Why is the moon red in an eclipse?

Originally posted by Phlabibit
This when the sun comes between the Earth and the moon blocking it out.

P-

The sun between Earth and the moon?

Would it fit?

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
My understanding was that it's the opposite. I thought blue light gets refracted more.

That's the whole point, blue gets refracted right down to the ground, red just enough for some of it to skip out of the atmoshere and hit the moon. BTW, there is an on-going study analyzing the light coming from the part of the moon which is tilted away from the sun. You may notice, because of the reflection of light from the earth's atmosphere, that part of the moon can still be seen a little bit because some of that light actually reaches the moon and where the sun doesn't hit, say on gibbous moon or crescent moon, Earth light can be measured and it is a way of gaining long term overall reflectance of the atmosphere so giving atmopshere scientists an independant means to measure cloud cover. During the times after 9-11 when there were no flights allowed there was less cloud cover directly related to the amount of jet aircraft and the effect was seen in the reflected light from the dark area's on the moon. Less cloud cover meant more light hitting earth and less reflecting to illuminate the un-lit area's of the moon.