The moon will pass through the earth’s shadow tonight in what will be a minor lunar eclipse, according to Space.com.
The lunar eclipse can be viewed live through the Sloosh Space Camera on Space.com at 11:37 pm EDT.
The eclipse will be most visible in North America, South America, Central America, and Western Africa, says NASA’s Fred Espenak at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. The eclipse will last 30 minutes from 11:53 pm EDT to 12:27 am EDT. Espenak, the moon will be its furthest into the shadow of the Earth at 12:10 am EDT.
According to Space.com, “The Slooh webcast will originate from two telescope feeds from the firm's observatory in the Canary Islands of the west coast of Africa.”
Astronomy magazine’s Bob Berman will provide audio commentary during the live webcast.
The lunar eclipse comes in the wake of two phenomena that recently took place in the sky.
On May 9 to May 10, the sun was made to look like a “ring of fire” due to an annular eclipse. The “ring of fire” comes from the moon covering 95 percent of the sun. The path of annularity went through Queensland in Australia, the Solomon Islands, and a tiny island nation called Kiribati.
On May 13, observers of the sky noticed a strange ring around the sun in the middle of the day. According to Dennis Phillips, a meteorologist for ABC Action News, the ring—called a 22 degree halo or sun halo—is a fairly common occurrence. It is caused when sunlight, or moonlight, refractS off the small ice crystals in high cirrostratus clouds at a 22 degree angle.
