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A total lunar eclipse will be visible to sky gazers in North and South America and western parts of Europe and Africa on January 20. As a bonus, it will be a supermoon, so it’ s a bigger eclipse than usual.


A supermoon, according to NASA, is basically what it sounds like—it appears larger and brighter to the human eye because it is at perigree, meaning its closest point to Earth in its orbit. A lunar eclipse doesn’t black out the moon; it actually creates what’s sometimes called a Blood Moon. The Earth’s shadow is completely blocking the sun, but light still makes its way through, creating a red cast on the moon’s surface, as TimeAndDate.com explains:

When sunlight passes through the Earth’s atmosphere, it gets refracted towards the Earth’s surface, and part of it—the colors with shorter wavelengths—gets scattered and filtered out, while the rest, colors with longer wavelengths like orange and red, passes through the atmosphere. This light is once again refracted towards the surface of the fully eclipsed Moon, thus illuminating it in a reddish-orange glow.


The eclipse should definitely be visible without a telescope, as long as the weather conditions are right and you’re in the correct region. The Earth’s shadow has three sections— the Umbra, its darkest central shadow; the Penumbra, the lighter exterior shadow; and the Antumbra, the space in between.

The Penumbral eclipse begins first, eventually increasing in shadow density, then turning into a Penumbral eclipse again as the moon moves through its orbit. The whole thing takes over five hours, but you can check the estimated time period for when it’ s happening in your area here. The full eclipse is estimated to last over an hour—plenty of time to stare into the sk y in awe.