by Dr. Ed Berry
They call it the fourth blood Moon. When 4 total eclipses occur at 6-month intervals, it is a tetrad. It’s supposed to have an ominous meaning.
It will happen tomorrow, September 27 or 28 depending upon where you live. It will be the fourth full eclipse of the Moon in the last 18 months.
If you live between central USA and England in longitude, you have an opportunity to see the eclipse. It depends, of course, upon whether you are under a clear sky.
Historically, this eclipse is a big deal. We won’t have another tetrad until 2032-2033.
Space.com has great video descriptions of the eclipse. TimeandDate.com tells you when you can see the eclipse. Just type in your city.
The eclipse will reach its maximum in London at 3:47 am on September 28. In the USA, the eclipse maximum will occur at 10:47 pm ET and 8:27 pm MT on September 27.
The full eclipse lasts about 5 hours. So it will begin about 2 hours 30 minutes before maximum and end about 2 hours 30 minutes after maximum.
In Kalispell, Montana, the Moon will be in the early part of the eclipse when it rises above the Swan Range at about 7:22 pm MT.
The “blood” is the reddish color of the Moon during a full eclipse. The reddish color is like an Earth sunset displayed on the Moon.
The sunlight that reaches the Moon during a full eclipse must pass through the Earth’s atmosphere before it gets to the moon. Just like during a sunset or sunrise, the Earth’s atmosphere scatters out the blue light and lets the longer-wavelength red light pass through. So the light reaching the Moon at this time is reddish.
“Ominous?”
I don’t think so. The popular books and articles about this are based upon bad statistics. These authors cherry pick the tetrads that associate with events they want. These authors also say the ominous event can occur a few years “before” as well as after a tetrad. In other words, they allow the effect to precede the cause. Hmmm.
You can check the tetrad data yourself. NASA lists all the eclipses and tetrads from 2000 BC to 3000 AD.  September 27, 2015, will be the first tetrad of the 21st century.
The previous 3 eclipses in this tetrad were on April 15, 2014; October 8, 2014; April 4, 2015. To top it off, we had a total solar eclipse on March 20, 2015.
Is there a stock-market effect?
Some people claim there is. They even say a full moon without an eclipse can affect the stock market.
Can this really be?
I don’t know. However, their hypothesis is worthy of test. Their hypothesis is a full moon affects people’s emotions and people’s emotions affect their decisions.
Certainly, the market today is at a point where something big can happen. With no relationship to this eclipse, about two-thirds of the financial gurus already predict a serious market crash. The other one-third predict a market rise.
Will this eclipse trigger the next significant stock market change? We should allow a test time of a week to a month.