Stargazers will have a chance to see a “Blood Moon” on Sunday night during a total lunar eclipse visible across Asia and swathes of Europe and Africa.
When the sun, Earth and moon line up, the shadow cast by the planet on its satellite makes it appear an eerie, deep red color that has astounded humans for millennia.
People in Asia, including India and China, will be best placed to see Sunday’s total eclipse, which will also be visible on the eastern edge of Africa as well as in western Australia.
Stargazers in Europe and Africa will get a brief chance to see a partial eclipse just as the moon rises during the early evening, while the Americas will miss out.
The moon appears red during lunar eclipses because the only sunlight reaching it is “reflected and scattered through the Earth’s atmosphere,” said Ryan Milligan, an astrophysicist at Northern Ireland’s Queen’s University Belfast.
Blue wavelengths of light are shorter than red ones and are more easily dispersed as they travel through Earth’s atmosphere, he told AFP.
