The moon is expected to turn anything from a yellowish brown to a blood red in Tuesday night’s total lunar eclipse.
According to a Web page posted by NASA, the moon will not reach totality in Mobile until 4:52 a.m. and will set at sunrise fully eclipsed.
The moon’s surface will darken as the earth’s shadow creeps across it to create a partial eclipse from just before 7pm (AEST), with the total eclipse visible one hour later.
Although it will be a total eclipse the ring of light around the earth’s edge is enough to illuminate the moon’s surface.
Viewers along the West Coast, and in Alaska and Hawaii, will get a full view of this eclipse, with the event starting and ending two hours earlier in California and three hours earlier in Alaska. In Hawaii, where there is no daylight-saving time, totality begins at 11:52 p.m. today.
“It is a pretty sight and it’s an unusual sight so it’s worth looking at,” said Professor Mike Dopita from the Australian National University’s School of Astronomy.
“The moon gets this sometimes quite blood red colour and it’s quite an interesting sight to see although it is of no astronomical importance at all.”
Prof Dopita said it was hard to predict exactly what colour the moon would be.
“It really varies. Sometimes it’s a kind of a sunset yellowish colour, sometimes it looks quite red. It depends upon whether there’s been volcanic activity.
“When there’s more dust it turns redder. After Mt Pinatubo Volcano (in the Philippines) erupted (in 1991) there was lots and lots of dust in the atmosphere but that has all settled.
“It might be anything from a yellowish earthy colour to a really dull brownish colour passing through red and in between, but an unusual colour to see the moon anyway.”
The last total lunar eclipse, visible in Australia, was in July 2000.
Prof Dopita said total eclipses were relatively infrequent.
“There’s usually about two of them a year but they are usually partial - a total one is a little bit rarer,” he said.
The next total lunar eclipse visible in Australia will occur in December 2011.