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by Michael Crowley
Tonight, a little after 11 PM, our moon will look a little different. A partial lunar eclipse is coming on Thursday night, August 27, 2026. The moon will begin to dim starting at 8:23 pm as the Earth’s shadow begins to cover the moon. As this happens, the moon will continuously grow redder and redder throughout the night before returning to normal by 2 AM. But of course, this is the one day in August where there could actually be something ahead of us in terms of rainfall.
AUSTIN, Texas — Tonight, a little after 11 PM, our moon will look a little different. A partial lunar eclipse is coming on Thursday night, August 27, 2026. The moon will begin to dim starting at 8:23 pm as the Earth’s shadow begins to cover the moon. As this happens, the moon will continuously grow redder and redder throughout the night before returning to normal by 2 AM. But of course, this is the one day in August where there could actually be something ahead of us in terms of rainfall.
More on the forecast later, let’s talk about the science behind the lunar eclipse. First, you often hear “oh this will be a one-of-a-kind eclipse!” “Won’t happen again for decades!” Partial lunar eclipses like this are not necessarily “rare”, but it actually only happens every few years. But they are still much more common than total solar eclipses.

This is because the Earth is just so much larger than the Moon. From Earth’s perspective, the moon is just about the size of the sun in our sky, even though they are at vastly different distances and actual sizes. From the moon’s perspective, however, the Earth is significantly larger than the sun, so the Earth blocks so much of the light that the only light that reaches the moon is red light. This is light that has passed through our atmosphere on its way to the moon, bending as it does so, with our atmosphere absorbing all other wavelengths except red. This is the same reason we see the sun turn more orange, red, and pink at sunrise and sunset.
Now for the forecast. Long story short, we should be fine. A mid-level disturbance moved in yesterday, bringing in some light showers for some across Central Texas. Naturally, the one time we need the weather to be quiet so we can observe something like a lunar eclipse in our night sky, we have our first decent rain chance in over a month. I expect the majority of that rainfall to fall in the afternoon and early evening, so even if we get rain, most of us will see plenty of opportunities to see the blood moon between partly cloudy skies.
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