Moon turns red in a dance with the red planet
Totality lasted for 103 minutes, making it the longest eclipse of the 21st century
The Dundee area’s attention was focused skywards last night as people braved the chill to marvel at the spectacle of the longest Blood Moon lunar eclipse we’ll see this century.
For about half the world, the moon was partly or fully in Earth’s shadow from 1714 to 2328 GMT — six hours and 14 minutes in all.
The period of complete eclipse — known as “totality”, when the moon appears darkest — lasted from 1930 to 2113 GMT – add two hours for Dundee time.
“Totality lasted for 103 minutes, making it the longest eclipse of the 21st century!” the Royal Astronomical Society said.
At the same time, Mars hovered near the moon in the night sky, easily visible with the naked eye.
Our neighbouring planet appeared unusually large and bright, a mere 57.7 million kilometres (35.9 million miles) from Earth on its elliptical orbit around the sun.
“We had a rare and interesting conjunction of phenomena,” Pascal Descamps, an astronomer with the Paris Observatory, told AFP.
How the moon disappeared:
