Moon goes red this weekend: Eclipse for Americas

1. Animation of eclipse showing Moon turning red-orange ASSOCIATED PRESS Greenbelt, Maryland, US – 11 May 2022 ++PARTIALLY COVERED++ 2. SOUNDBITE (English) Michelle Thaler, NASA scientist: “Beginning Sunday evening, there’s going to be one of my favorite celestial phenomena, and that’s a lunar eclipse. And the thing that’s so wonderful about these is that they are incredibly easy to see. All you need to do is go outside. You don’t need any sort of special viewing equipment. And so what’s going to happen is that on Sunday night, the moon is actually going to move into the shadow of the earth, and everything needs to be perfectly lined up for that. That doesn’t happen every month. It always happens when we have a full moon, which means that the sun and the moon are at opposite sides of the Earth. The Earth’s in the middle and the earth will be casting a shadow onto the moon. And so if you in the the eastern part of North America, that’s going to begin at about 10 p.m.. And the peak of that will be a little bit after midnight on the East Coast of the United States. Now, the thing that’s kind of wonderful about this particular lunar eclipse is that it’s actually viewable over much of the world. So it’s actually wonderfully positioned. So if you’re in South America, you’ll be able to see the entire eclipse, including the wonderful part of totality. And then if you’re in North America, about half of it we’ll see the whole eclipse. But all the way from New Zealand, we’ll see a partial eclipse all the way through to some parts of Eastern Europe. So a lot of people on the planet have a chance to see this eclipse in one form or another.” NASA – MUST CREDIT NASA 3. Animation of lunar eclipse, due to happen on Sunday 15 May 4. Animation showing where eclipse will be visible 5. Animation showing Earth and the Moon 6. Animation showing view of Earth from the Moon during eclipse STORYLINE: A total lunar eclipse will grace the night skies this weekend, providing longer than usual thrills for stargazers across the Americas. The celestial action unfolds Sunday night into early Monday morning. The moon will be bathed in the reflected red and orange hues of Earth’s sunsets and sunrises for about 1 1/2 hours. It will be the longest totality of the decade and the first so-called blood moon in a year. Observers in the eastern half of North America, and all of Central and South America, will have front-row seats for the whole show, weather permitting.