Thursday, 8 May 2014

the moon - Illusion of a lunar eclipse

A little over half a year ago, I think it was mid March 2015, I glanced out of my window at about 4 am, to see what appeared to be a very bright total lunar eclipse, as in, the moon was full and bright orange-red. As I watched, it disappeared before my eyes, looking as if someone slid a paper down in front of it. The moon was not full that night (and by extension that means that there couldn't have been an eclipse that night) and the next few nights, the moon was on the other side of the sky at 4 am.



The room I was in was dark, so it couldn't have been a reflection on the window of something inside the house. It might have been a reflection on the window of something outside the house, but that's not very likely, because it was very bright and opaque (something would have to be really bright to look so bright and opaque when reflected off a window, and I can't think of anything that would have been so bright. Plus, I probably would have noticed something something so bright), it didn't move when I moved my head around, and it looked exactly like the moon – it had the same dark and light spots. I would have taken a picture of it, it would be a lot easier to understand what I mean if you would see it, but it disappeared really fast.



It might have been a reflection on the clouds. I don't recall if there were clouds in the sky, I wasn't paying that much attention to the sky around it, because while it was happening I just thought it was an eclipse. But if it was a reflection on the clouds, there's still the question of what was being reflected.



I asked someone who knows a lot about a bunch of topics, but is not good at explaining what he means, what it could have been, and he said something about solar flares, I didn't really get what he was saying. I would ask him again, but I don't know him personally and I don't know how to contact him, and in any case, I don't think he would explain it any better the second time.



I searched everywhere I could possibly think of (on the web, on Q&A sites, on SE) for a cause for this, but couldn't find anything like it.



What I'm asking is this: Could it have been a reflection on the clouds, and if so, what could it have been of? Could it have been caused by a solar flare or something like it, and if so, how? Is there an astronomical event that occurred around that time that could have caused something like that, and if so, what and how?



This question was put on hold as unclear what you're asking, so if anyone has any suggestions that can make the question more clear, I would love to hear it. I wish I could be more precise about when it happened, or what exactly it looked like, but I didn't write it down or note it in any way at the time, so this is pretty much all I remember.

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