Blood moon: Longest lunar eclipse of the century is coming this week

There are many good reasons to gaze at the moon, but this week will provide an extra-special one.

On Friday, July 27, the moon will colour red in the Netherlands, as the longest lunar eclipse of the 21st century occurs.

Stages and time of the lunar eclipse that will be visible in Singapore on July 28, 2018.

The star gazers of Singapore will have to wait until May 26, 2021, for the next total lunar eclipse visible from the country. The eclipse will end at 11.14, making it the longest eclipse of the moon this century. But hey, we just had a pretty spectacular total solar eclipse, so we can’t complain.

On January 31st, the world witnessed its first lunar eclipse of the year, where the moon appeared red in colour and much bigger in size.

What will the eclipse look like?

Professor Khalid al-Zaaq, a member in the Arab Union for Astronomy and Space Sciences, revealed on his social media accounts that on Friday July 27, Saudi Arabia will experience the longest lunar total eclipse since 83 years. The moon will appear slightly smaller because it is farther from the Earth. The total lunar eclipse will last almost 103 minutes, which makes it the century’s longest.

South Africa’s next total lunar eclipse is early morning of 16 May 2022. You can, however, watch it as it happens, online at several locations: TimeAndDate.com has one, as does the Virtual Telescope Project.

Those in the Eastern Hemisphere will enjoy the best of the lunar eclipse.

According to the U.S. space research institute NASA, residents in other parts of Africa and Asia as well those in Europe, Australia, and South America will be able to see a partial lunar eclipse, reported a private tv news channel on Sunday.

According to EarthSky.org, the optimal time to view the Blood Moon is at 9:21pm BST, and the total event will last from 8.30pm to 10.13pm BST. You can find the exact time in your time zone by entering your location here. This is your one-stop shop for how, why, where and when to watch Blood Moon. The darkest part of Earth’s shadow, the umbra, can be pictured as a cone extending from Earth in the opposite direction to the sun. That’s because some of the sunlight going through Earth’s atmosphere is bent around the edge of our planet and falls onto the moon’s surface.

“You may see this very eerie-looking deep-red moon rising”, said Mr Scagell. The phenomenon may also be observed in Europe but not as dramatically as at the end of July.

Recent red skies are apparently down to the specific scattering of light particles through the atmosphere.