Lunar eclipse: tonight!
By David Biello
This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
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It's not quite the worldwide phenomenon of last March, but a partial eclipse hits the U.S. east coast at 8:43 PM tonight and proceeds to totality at 10:01 PM. Said orange-ish totality should persist until nearly 11 PM, reaching its peak of beauty at 10:26 PM, according to NASA. That red is the color of the earth's shadow (for the same reason sunset looks red--the atmosphere.) Of course, said atmosphere, if cloudy, could prevent us from seeing anything in the first place. But atmospheric ozone can also paint another color on the moon: turquoise. Keep a close eye out and you might see a blue fringe to the red, red moon. We'll have to hope for cloudless skies. The next such eclipse won't be visible until December 2010.
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