Alaskans will be treated to a lunar eclipse in the early hours of Saturday (April 4) morning.
Omega Smith with the UAA Planetarium said the moon will begin to go into earth’s shadow around 2:15 am.
Smith: “It doesn’t reach the full eclipse until about four o’clock in the morning, but the full eclipse stage is really really short this time, it’s the shortest it’s ever been in the century and it’s only about four minutes and forty three seconds long. Then you’ll start to see the moon come out of the earth’s shadow afterwards and it doesn’t end completely until about 5:44 in the morning.”
She said that the earth is in a series of eclipses but this is the last full eclipse for a while.
Smith: “You don’t need a telescope at all. The moon’s going to look really red, so we also call it a blood moon and that’s basically because earth’s atmosphere is reflecting and scattering all the blue light so that red still stays in the shadow.”
To see an animation of the event, click here.
