Bloody brilliant: Eclipse spectacle stuns Zululanders

The celestial display that was Sunday night’s total lunar eclipse was met with awe and wonder across Zululand, KZN, South Africa, and the world.

While cloud cover threatened to put paid to the Zululand region witnessing this rare spectacle, residents still managed to watch the event unfold.

From around 6.30pm, the full moon gradually became shrouded in shadow as the earth moved between the sun and the moon.

By 7.30pm, the full eclipse began, with the maximum eclipse witnessed at 8.11pm and finishing at 8.52pm, after which the moon could be seen gradually making its way back into the light.

A blood moon occurs when the earth’s shadow completely covers the full moon, filtering sunlight through the atmosphere and turning the moon’s surface a deep red or coppery brown.

While an awesome spectacle to witness, in South Africa the blood moon takes on a more sinister meaning, colloquially termed the poacher’s moon, which has in previous years resulted in higher numbers of rhino poached in the country’s game reserves.

Zululanders took to social media platforms to share their photographs of the eclipse, with blood moons flooding the internet until late into the night.

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