Last lunar eclipse for almost two years
Saturday marks the 50th anniversary of man’s landing on the moon and tomorrow morning, as if part of a warm-up act, the moon, the Earth and the sun will line up to deliver a partial eclipse.
If you're up before dawn on Wednesday, have a good view and the weather is kind, you’ll notice a chunk bitten out of the moon's right-hand side.
The show starts at about 6.01am (AEST), 5.31am in Adelaide and Darwin and 4.01am in Perth.
“I think it's definitely worth getting up and having a moon festival this week,” Sydney Observatory’s Dr Andrew Jacob told the ABC.
“And this will be the last lunar eclipse of any type that we really get to see for another couple of years.”
The next eclipse is not due until 26 May 2021.
A lunar eclipse occurs when the darkest part of Earth's shadow crosses the face of the moon, but in a partial eclipse the alignment is slightly out, so not all the moon is covered by the darkest part of Earth’s shadow.
“For the eastern states it’ll be obvious that there’s that chunk out, for the west it will be very, very clear that there's an eclipse happening,” Dr Jacob said.
A timely reminder :)
For interested Perthsiders...
The animation shows what the eclipse approximately looks like in Perth. Stages and times of the eclipse are outlined below. All times are local time (AWST) for Perth.
https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in/australia/perth