A total lunar eclipse will grace the night skies this weekend, providing longer than usual thrills for stargazers across North and South America.<\/p>\n
The celestial action unfolds Sunday night into early Monday morning, with the moon bathed in the reflected red and orange hues of Earth\u2019s sunsets and sunrises for about 1 1\/2 hours, one of the longest totalities of the decade. It will be the first so–<\/span>called blood moon in a year.<\/p>\n Observers in the eastern half of North America and all of Central and South America will have prime seats for the whole show, weather permitting. Partial stages of the eclipse will be visible across Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Left out: Alaska, Asia and Australia.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is really an eclipse for the Americas,\u201d said NASA\u2019<\/span>s Noah Petro, a planetary geologist who specializes in the moon. \u201cIt\u2019<\/span>s going to be a treat.\u201d<\/p>\n All you need, he noted, are \u201cpatience and eyeballs.\u201d<\/p>\n A total eclipse occurs when Earth passes directly between the moon and the sun, and casts a shadow on our constant, cosmic companion. The moon will be 225,000 miles (362,000 kilometers) away at the peak of the eclipse \u2014 around midnight on the U.S. East Coast.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is this gradual, slow, wonderful event that as long as it\u2019s clear where you are, you get to see it,\u201d Petro said.<\/p>\n If not, NASA will provide a livestream of the eclipse from various locations; so will the Slooh network of observatories.<\/p>\n There\u2019ll be another lengthy total lunar eclipse in November, with Africa and Europe lucking out again, but not the Americas. Then the next one isn\u2019t until 2025.<\/p>\n Launched last fall, NASA\u2019s asteroid–<\/span>seeking Lucy spacecraft will photograph this weekend\u2019<\/span>s event from 64 million miles (103 million kilometers) away, as ground controllers continue their effort to fix a loose solar panel.<\/p>\n NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins, a geologist, plans to set her alarm clock early aboard the International Space Station.<\/p>\n \u201cHopefully, we can be up in time and be at the right place at the right time to catch a good glimpse,\u201d she told The Associated Press earlier this week. A total lunar eclipse will grace the night skies this weekend, providing longer than usual thrills for stargazers across North and South America. The celestial action unfolds Sunday night into early Monday morning, with the moon bathed in the reflected red and orange hues of Earth\u2019s sunsets and sunrises for about 1 1\/2 hours, one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":21797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[1648,9517,13369,5274,8221,9705,3347,12326,9292,6517,6621,10954,6518,8719,10477,5587,7964,11973,5795,5470,10476,5374,9262,9085,12790,3954,594],"class_list":["post-21795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-africa","tag-alaska","tag-americas","tag-asia","tag-asteroid","tag-astronaut","tag-australia","tag-decade","tag-earth","tag-eclipse","tag-europe","tag-international","tag-lunar","tag-middle-east","tag-moon","tag-nasa","tag-north","tag-one","tag-solar","tag-space","tag-spacecraft","tag-sun","tag-united-states","tag-weather","tag-weekend","tag-will","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21795"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52297,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21795\/revisions\/52297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"