Moonlight: Why is the moon red and big unusually?

The last eclipse of 2011 took place yesterday, with the unusually large and red moon - pleasing millions of observers.

>>>Admire the lunar eclipse from around the world

The eclipse of the evening of December 10 begins at 11: 33 GMT (18h33 Vietnamese time) and ends after 17:30 GMT (0030 Vietnamese time). The moon is completely obscured in 51 minutes and 8 seconds, from 1406 GMT to 1457 GMT (ie from 21h06 to 21h57 hours Vietnam).

The earth's atmosphere is the "author" that creates strange colors
the moon when a lunar eclipse occurs.

The eclipse occurs when the earth blocks the sun's direct light reaching the moon. But when the lunar eclipse reached full, the moon was glowing red. It is all because sunlight has passed through the earth's atmosphere.

The reason the moon has a beautiful red color when it comes to lunar eclipse is by way of sunlight scattered in the earth's atmosphere.

Coming from the other side of the earth, sunlight must go a long way through the atmosphere before escaping and toward the moon.

In that journey, sunlight is lost to other colors, which are color spectra, in front of atmospheric molecules and dust. These factors disperse short wavelengths of light. The more dust, the more red the surface of the moon becomes. This is also the cause of the deep red at the end of sunset or dawn.

As for the moon's apparent size when it is close to the horizon, some researchers believe that unusually large images are purely illusory, due to human eyes comparing the size of the moon to buildings, groves of trees. , mountains or other similar things on the horizon. When the moon 'grows' on a familiar object, its 'true' size will exist. This can be proved by circles drawn on a sheet of paper.

Some other researchers argue that the extraordinary 'big' depends on the distance, the concept, and on the very structure of our human eyes. Normally, objects seem to shrink when they approach the horizon. But the size of the moon does not seem to be shrinking due to the fact: its distance remains constant throughout the evening. So when the moon approaches the horizon, our brain tries to make its constant size consistent with expectations based on a priori concept by 'understanding' the moon that seems larger when it Towards the horizon.