Australians will be treated to the extremely rare “strawberry moon” lunar eclipse in the early hours of Saturday.
The phenomenon, which is also called by experts as the penumbral eclipse, happens when the earth, sun, and moon are all aligned.
This means that the earth blocks the sun’s light from reaching the moon, casting a shadow over it.
The amazing scene can be seen across the country and will begin around 3:45 am on the east coast
On the west coast, you can see the extremely rare moon by 1:45 am.
David Gozzard, an astrophysicist from the University Of Western Australia International Center for Radio Astronomy Research said that eclipse will last around 3 hours.
Dr. Gozzard said:
A strawberry moon is a name for a full moon in June and lunar eclipses like these always happen at the full moon. It’s called a penumbral eclipse so the Earth’s shadow has a fuzzy outer region where you only get a partial shadow and not a full shadow of the sun. That’s called a penumbra and that is the area the moon will pass through. The moon won’t disappear it’ll just go dimmer, so what we’ll really see is a dimmed full moon. It won’t be as bright as it normally is.
Dr. Gozzard said that the best views of the very rare moon can be seen from the West Coast.
However, Australians can see everything too.
The Dr. added:
Because it’s going to last about three hours that means it’s going to be peaking around twilight, so around dawn, when the sun is getting up. The full moon is going to be quite high in the sky so it’ll be reasonably obvious. Anywhere you can get out and see the sky and see the moon will be a good place to see it from, as long as you can get a reasonably unobstructed view to the west. It’ll be very obvious you don’t need anything special to see it.
The eclipse is expected to be over by 7 am and will be seen in line with the horizon in the east and higher in the sky in the west.
Dr. Gozzard continued:
Lunar eclipses come in pairs or sometimes triplets so this will have a corresponding sibling eclipse in May next year. It will be a more spectacular eclipse with a total or partial eclipse of the shadow of the earth.
The next 2 lunar eclipses can be seen on July 4 to 5 and November 29 to 30 this year.