Total lunar eclipse tonight

[InvincibleDrone]

Take a break from your monitors tonight and look outside. Hopefully it won't be overcast in your area. Watch the moon turn an orange or red colour.

A lunar eclipse occurs when the moon, Earth and sun roughly align in space, with the moon passing through the Earth's shadow. If the darkest portion of the shadow, called the umbra, fully envelops the moon, that's a total eclipse.

Robert �Dr. Bob� Young, founder of the Rome Astronomy Club, said that the moon won�t vanish completely and will cast an amber, crimson tint because of an occurrence known as �Earthshine.�

�Light is reflected off the Earth onto the moon,� he said. �It�s similar to when there is a full moon, and it illuminates the Earth. If it wasn�t for the deflection of light, it would just disappear.�

Young added that after the moon comes out of the eclipse it will slowly brighten into its full-moon stage. �It�s an amazing site,� he said. �It will go through all the phases of the moon right before your eyes.�

[Baker]

I've never seen a lunar eclipse before, I'll have to see when it happens in my time zone (if it happens at all in my time zone).

[I have looked directly at a partial solar eclipse for a split second (on accident, wasn't thinking). For the next day, I had a pattern of the sun everywhere I looked. Yeah, solar and lunar eclipses are completely different but this made me think of it.)

[InvincibleDrone]

I remember the last solar eclipse way back in 91 or 92. I think they all kept us inside the (elementry at that time) school. Or we were all outside.. heh i cant recall for sure- i guess it wasn't that memorable.

But if your looking for times.. well they'd be the same around the globe, cause it just works like that. The moon will rise at 6:15 p.m. already fully in the Earth's shadow, its color a deep brick red. The hue is caused by sunlight bending through the Earth's atmosphere.

The moon will remain totally eclipsed until 6:58 p.m. Then, over the next 74 minutes, the Earth's curved shadow will gradually recede, exposing more and more of the moon's lemony face until the eclipse ends at 8:12 p.m.

So ya go from nothing(new moon) to a full moon in just over an hour

[Phenom]

I seen this happen one other time when I was a small child, I was out sledding with my brother and when we got done because it was getting dark we noticed the moon was about twice as big as normal and it was glowing red, it was creepy stuff back then because I didnt know what was going on but it was still cool, I'll keep watch today for this though