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This week's 'blood moon' eclipse mirrors one Christopher Columbus used
to scare indigenous people in 1504
News
By Jamie Carter published 12 hours ago
On March 13-14, 2025, skywatchers in the Americas will witness a total
lunar eclipse that mirrors one Christopher Columbus is said to have used
to his advantage over five centuries ago.

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Wimage of a blood red moon during a total lunar eclipse on the left and
a sketch of columbus pointing up at the eclipse with frightened people
around him.
Christopher Columbus is said to have used a "blood moon" to his
advantage on March 1, 1504. (Image credit: Created in Canva by Daisy
Dobrijevic furnished with Columbus image (credit: mikroman6 / Getty Images))
In 1504, Christopher Columbus, on his fourth trans-Atlantic voyage, was stranded on the shores of Jamaica, with his ships crawling with marine
worms and his crew hungry. The Indigenous Arawak people, who had
initially welcomed the Europeans, had grown weary of their demands.

But Columbus had a trick up his sleeve: According to The Guardian, he
consulted his astronomical tables and saw that a total lunar eclipse was imminent on March 1, 1504. Summoning the island's leaders, he warned
them that his god would blot out the moon in anger if they did not help
him by providing supplies. Fear gripped the Arawak people when the
blood-red eclipse darkened the sky, and they rushed to appease Columbus
with food and aid.

Related: Where will the 'blood moon' total lunar eclipse be visible in
March 2025?

The 1504 total lunar eclipse
"The 1504 eclipse is well-documented as having been used by Columbus,
who knew of the eclipse prediction, to convince the native tribes in
Jamaica to aid his crew," Patrick Hartigan, a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University in Houston, wrote in a recent paper
published by the American Astronomical Society.

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7 fascinating facts about lunar eclipses
It's a great story, but what does it have to do with the total lunar
eclipse on March 13-14? Remarkably, the eclipses are 521 years apart,
which means the moon takes an almost identical path through Earth's
shadow and occurs against the same background stars.

How lunar eclipses are predicted
This striking similarity is no coincidence. All eclipses come in
families called Saros. A near-identical eclipse occurs every 223
"lunations" — orbits of the moon around Earth. According to NASA, that's
once every 6,585.3 days — or 18 years, 11 days, 8 hours. The total lunar eclipse on March 13-14, 2025, is part of a pattern Saros 123 cycle,
which has been producing total lunar eclipses every 18 years, 11 days, 8
hours since July 16, 1628, and will do so until April 4, 2061.

Multicentury eclipse cycles
Saros, which literally means "the repetition," is how eclipses are
predicted many centuries ahead. However, there are other cycles at play.
One is the Hypersaros, a multigenerational cycle that lasts 521 years.
That's equivalent to 25 Saros cycles, and it has an observable effect.
Eclipses separated by a Hypersaros have similar depths, appear very
close to the same location in the sky, and occur at nearly the same time
of year, according to Hartigan.

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On March 13-14, skywatchers will have the same view of the "blood moon"
total lunar eclipse as Columbus and the Arawak people had on Feb. 29,
1504, a celestial déjà vu that echoes across more than five centuries.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions,
night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment,
let us know at: community@space.com.

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Jamie Carter
Jamie Carter
Contributing Writer
Jamie is an experienced science, technology and travel journalist and
stargazer who writes about exploring the night sky, solar and lunar
eclipses, moon-gazing, astro-travel, astronomy and space exploration. He
is the editor of WhenIsTheNextEclipse.com and author of A Stargazing
Program For Beginners, and is a senior contributor at Forbes. His
special skill is turning tech-babble into plain English.

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