VARIOUS: Star gazers witness "Blood" moon in lunar eclipse

A full lunar eclipse in a clear night sky creates stunning images of a red moon across parts of the world. Sky gazers witnessed a spectacular lunar eclipse in the skies over Australia, Latin America and the west coast of the United States on Tuesday (August 28). A lunar eclipse happens when the Earth gets directly between the sun and the moon, blocking the light that normally reflects off the moon. Total lunar eclipses are much easier to observe than total solar eclipses which can be seen only for a few minutes from a narrow track of land. Tuesday's lunar totality was visible from a wide swath of Earth for almost an hour and a half. This was the second lunar eclipse to occur this year. In Australia, sky gazers witnessed the eclipse in the skies over Sydney. It started around 7 pm (0900GMT) Australian Eastern Standard Time and lasted for at least an hour and a half. Sydneysiders after work, rushed to open sky areas and watched the show. One said it was "wonderful, stunning, like a big red ball in the sky". Another said it was more impressive than he thought it would be - "first time in my life I've seen anything like this". In Argentina, onlookers braved a chilly winter morning to catch a glance of the first phases of the dawn-set eclipse. Onlookers carefully peered low into a cloudy western sky, and at 18 degrees above the horizon could see the eclipse begin. The moon darkened as the earth began to move between it and the sun, casting its shadow slowly across the moon's surface. Lunar eclipses are rare because the moon is usually either above or below the plane of the earth's orbit. "At the moment the moon is entering this tunnel of shadow, that is called the shadow cone. It will be submerged in the shadow for more than an hour. For us here in Argentine the moment of climax of the eclipse will be close to seven in the morning," Buenos Aires observatory spokesman, Mariano Rivas, said. The total eclipse then came an hour later when the sun, earth and moon all fell into perfect alignment. Mexico City got a better look of the phenomenon. The sky was still cloudy, but being further west of Buenos Aires, Mexicans who woke early enough were treated to a good view of the eclipse in its "totality", when the moon appears blood-red. The moon has no light of its own but shines because sunlight is being reflected from its surface. Thus, when the earth moves between it and the sun, the only light that reaches the moon are rays bent through the earth's corners. Because those rays pass through the earth's atmosphere, all of the sun's blue light is filtered out and the light that reaches the moon is red. The next lunar eclipse will be on February 21, 2008, and then not until 2010.

ITN Source | August 29, 2007

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