Perhaps a silly question not meant to be taken super seriously…
What exactly is a “Lunar Eclipse” to a balance druid?
The spell effect looks like a Solar Eclipse but with a blue sun. This does not resemble what we call a “lunar eclipse” living here on earth, so what’s considered a Lunar eclipse on Azeroth, and why does it have this appearance? Is this related to the two moons thing? Or was the Lunar Eclipse spell effect purely chosen to look cool, and it does not actually represent any Azerothian celestial phenomena?
Can you give more info on this? Googling this term doesn’t give anything comparable, I’m mainly getting typical lunar eclipse (IE moon with rusty-red shadow cast) results back.
That suspiciously looks like corona in the images you sent, which means that the sun is behind the moon, making it a solar eclipse. The moon will never have a rim glow like that, no matter what is blocking it.
From my knowledge, lunar eclipses usually look like:
https://i.imgur.com/Fu5w9Zy.jpg
(i know random imgur links are taboo, its just the moon i promise)
Well, now that I actually get around to thinking about it, there’s no way a lunar eclipse could look like that, because it would necessitate something else being in orbit around the Earth to block Luna. I guess when I said ‘it could look like that’ I was thinking from the perspective of the sun? Which doesn’t make sense. Sorry.
Unless it’s WoW, where there are two moons.
Also, Luna doesn’t have a corona. Which is pictured in every image you provided.
Of course, you haven’t provided context for those other two photos like you did the one, so I have no way of knowing what the photographer was taking pictures of, if they even were taking pictures and they aren’t just digital art…
We are just asking for information. The images you are presenting as lunar eclipses all look like solar eclipses. It’s not clear to me how they could be interpeted as a lunar eclipse, because the moon doesn’t shine like a star, and there is no 4th celestial body to eclipse it in view from earth.
We’re just wondering what on earth we are looking at, that’s all. If you post three pictures that are clearly giraffes and tell us they are rhinoceroses, we’re going to want to know where you got these images, who said they were rhinoceroces, and most importantly, how you could possibly believe these to be rhinoceroses yourself.
Well, since you didn’t provide links like the other, and I have nothing better to do…
The closest I was able to find for your second image was this NBC NEWS video, which depicts a total solar eclipse. The image itself appears to be the thumbnail, but can be seen around the beginning of the video.
As for the third, there were numerous different edits of it, but I was finally able to trace it back to a stock image website that lists it as a solar eclipse image taken in 2017.
Ok, that was a very strange interaction… Let’s re-engage normal person mode and refresh the topic, lol.
Presumably now everyone knows what a solar eclipse vs lunar eclipse is on earth, the relative arrangement of celestial bodies, and the effects that it has.
On Azeroth, given how a “Lunar Eclipse” is presented through spell effect, is this just made to look cool? Or does it actually represent some real arrangement of bodies for Azeroth?
I feel like it is almost certainly just a cool-looking spell effect chosen to match the “blue” / lunar / arcane / starry theme of being in that mechanic. And I feel like I am basically writing for them now… but…
The second moon of Azeroth is called the “Blue Child.” If we say glows blue like a star because it is magical, and we say that the “White Lady” (large moon) does not glow, then the eclipse being depicted could be Blue Child being eclipsed by White Lady, and that’s called a Lunar Eclipse (it is a moon being eclipsed, after all) on Azeroth.
Of course… the Blue Child was missing from the game for like… a decade, so I’m pretty sure it’s just a cool looking spell effect.
This would be an equivalent arrangement to a (earth-perspective) solar eclipse, but you are on the moon, observing the earth.
The earth can’t be eclipsed by the moon in totality, but it does cast its shadow on the Earth. Since the moon has no atmosphere, it doesn’t have any interesting color change effects like what a lunar eclipse imparts on the moon.
However, although not an “Earth Eclipse”, an (Earth-perspective) lunar eclipse viewed from the moon is interesting. A lunar eclipse, viewed from the moon, is a solar eclipse from the moon’s perspective, in which the sun is eclipsed by the Earth.
