A Spanish Look at the Lunar Eclipse

It isn't every day that you have the opportunity to watch the moon turn dark, so to mark the occasion of Wednesday night's lunar eclipse, we've put together a list of Spanish astronomical terms.

One thing you may notice from this list is that a disproportionate number of the nouns are are words that end in -a but are masculine, words such as el planeta, el cometa and el sistema solar. Like many other nouns that fit the pattern (such as clima, poema and problema), they come to us from Greek. The Greeks were known for, among other things, their knowledge of astronomy, and since both English and Spanish have a strong Greek heritage, you'll find that many of the astronomical terms are cognates that look familiar.

You'll find many of the words in the vocabulary list in the following Spanish-language articles about lunar eclipses. Most of the Spanish in these articles in fairly straightforward. Because of the abundance of cognates (very common in scientific writing), you may be able to comprehend much of these articles even if you have a limited Spanish vocabulary:

• Eclipses de Luna (por AstroEduca)
• Los eclipses de Luna (por Grup d'Estudis Astronòmics)
• Eclipse total de Luna (por NASA)