WeatherFanatics: Lunar Eclipse Friday: Where to See It

Friday, October 18, 2013

Lunar Eclipse Friday: Where to See It

By Samantha-Rae Tuthill, AccuWeather.com Staff Writer

October 18,2013; 8:22PM,EDT

Larger view below

A partial lunar eclipse will be visible Friday into Saturday night for those living from eastern Canada and the upper Northeast to Africa and most of Europe.
At 23:51 UTC, the fullest coverage of the moon by Earth's shadow will occur, lasting for 239 minutes.
The eclipse will be most visible for the United States and Canada at 7:50 p.m. EDT. Due to the timing of the eclipse, the moonrise will not be high enough for western parts of North America to view; its peak will not reach so far west and will only be visible for Africa and Europe.

Eclipse reach, via NASA/Wikimedia Commons.
For the parts of the United States and Canada that the eclipse will reach, cloud coverage will hinder the view for a large area, especially in Canada. Two slow-moving storm systems will bring rainy and cloudy conditions to much of Canada Friday evening. Some areas in the Saint Lawrence River Valley may get breaks to catch a glimpse of the moon, but most of Eastern and Atlantic Canada will miss out on the viewing.
Conditions will be mostly clear for the small portion of the northeastern United States that the eclipse will extend into.

AccuWeather.com lunar eclipse viewing map for North America.
Unlike viewing a solar eclipse, lunar eclipses may be viewed by staring directly at them. They also won't require any additional equipment, such as telescopes or binoculars. Areas that have clear skies will be able to see it the same way they'd typically view the moon. Because this eclipse will only have a partial shadow, the difference may not be as noticeable to the general public.

AccuWeather.com lunar eclipse viewing map for Europe.
Most of Europe will have fair to good conditions at the time of the eclipse, where it will be visible at 12:50 a.m. WEST in Lisbon, Portugal, to 3:50 a.m. MSK Saturday in Moscow, Russia.
The best viewing conditions are expected in parts of Scandinavia as well as farther south across the Balkans. High pressure over these areas should promote mainly clear skies. These good viewing conditions will be sandwiched between two areas of poor viewing conditions. To the west, a large storm system will spread clouds across the British Isles and the western Iberian Peninsula, while another shield of clouds will cover the sky east of the Black Sea. Elsewhere, a few clouds can spread eastward across central europe, but many people will be able to view the eclipse from Barcelona to Paris to Berlin and Rome.
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Sky-Gazing Conditions
Lunar eclipses occur about two to four times a year. Some these are penumbral eclipses, which are so subtle that they hardly look like anything to the average observer.

Shadows have three parts, the umbra, penumbra and antumbra, which are used to describe the relation of the shadow to the degree of light casting it. The umbra is where the shadow is deepest, as the light source is fully blocked by the object casting the shadow. The penumbra and antumbra occur on the edges of the umbra where some of the light source lessens the shadow. The light cast on the moon during a penumbra eclipse obscures the view of the shadow cast, making the eclipse hard to notice.
This eclipse will be a penumbra, and astronomers will likely notice it more.
This will be the last lunar eclipse of 2013. The next easily visible eclipse will be April 15, 2014, seen as either a total or partial eclipse from Australia and eastern Asia across the Pacific to North and South America.
For more information or to send us your eclipse photos, visit AccuWeather.com Astronomy on Facebook.

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