This was a total lunar eclipse, the kind in which the Moon slides entirely into the dark centre of the Earth’s shadow and turns a deep orange or copper red for a while. The red comes from sunlight bent through the Earth’s atmosphere, the light of all the sunrises and sunsets in the world at that moment falling on the Moon. The eclipse took place on the full moon of Phalguna, the night of Phalguna Purnima.
The stages
The Moon first touched the faint outer shadow, the penumbra, at about 08:44 in Universal Time. This part is hard to notice by eye. The Moon reached the dark inner shadow, the umbra, at 09:50 UT, and the first bite appeared soon after. Totality began at 11:05 UT and ended at 12:03 UT, with the greatest eclipse in the middle at 11:33 UT. The Moon then drifted out of the shadow, leaving the umbra at 13:17 UT and the penumbra at 14:23 UT. The times in the table are the stages written in each city’s own clock. Because the shadow is the same size for everyone, each stage happened at the same instant wherever the Moon could be seen.
Where it was seen
Everyone for whom the Moon was above the horizon during the eclipse could see it. That covered the Pacific, Australia, East Asia and the Americas, with the whole eclipse visible from the western half of North America, eastern Australia and the Pacific islands such as Fiji. In Los Angeles the Moon was in totality from 03:04 to 04:02 on the morning of 3 March, and in Sydney totality ran from 22:04 to 23:02 that night.
What India saw
In India the eclipse took place before the Moon rose, so the first stages and all of totality were hidden below the horizon. The Moon rose in the east during the partial phase, at 18:20 in New Delhi, 17:37 in Kolkata and about 18:45 in Mumbai, already in the Earth’s shadow and low over the horizon. Where there was a clear horizon the rising Moon looked dark and reddish for a few minutes, then brightened as it left the shadow. In New Delhi the dark umbral phase ended at 18:47, and the faint penumbral phase ended at 19:52. The eclipse is therefore listed as visible in India, as a partial eclipse seen at moonrise.
Sutak
For a city where the eclipse was visible, the table gives the start of sutak, nine hours before the umbral eclipse began. For New Delhi and every other city in India it began at 06:20 IST on the morning of 3 March, because the clock times of the eclipse are the same across India. The festival of Phalguna Purnima fell on the same day, and the evening of Holika Dahan is described on the page about Holika Dahan and Holi. A household that keeps the sutak would ask its priest how it bears on the puja that evening. Families vary, and the table gives the facts and not a ruling.
The Moon in the sky
At the greatest eclipse the Moon stood in Simha, the sidereal Leo, about 18.6 degrees into the sign, in Purva Phalguni nakshatra. These are Lahiri positions, worked out here to within a few hundredths of a degree. The Sun stood opposite, in Kumbha, as it must at the full moon. Astrologers look at the sign and nakshatra of an eclipse and at the planets that touch it, and read it as a time to be more thoughtful and less hurried, not as a forecast. To find your own Moon sign and nakshatra, use the Moon sign calculator or the nakshatra calculator.