Africans watch 'blood moon' in longest lunar eclipse so far

Several people across the continent and in Europe and the Middle East took to social media to share the glimpses they had caught of a blood-red moon on Friday as the earth’s natural satellite moved into the shadow of our planet for the longest lunar eclipse of the 21st century.

From the Cape of Good Hope to the Middle East, and from the Kremlin to Sydney Harbour, thousands of people turned their eyes to the stars, hoping to see the moon which began to appear orange, brown or crimson as it moved into the earth’s shadow.

The total eclipse which lasted 1 hour, 42 minutes and 57 seconds, with a partial eclipse preceding it, meaning the moon spent a total of 3 hours and 54 minutes in the earth’s umbral shadow, according to NASA.

In the Middle East, the moon rose above the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi while in Kenya it rose over Marabou storks nesting in Nairobi’s trees.

On the banks of India’s Ganges, temples were closed ahead of eclipse. In Singapore, enthusiasts primed telescopes at the Marina South Pier.

Hundreds of people in Australia paid to watch the eclipse from the Sydney Observatory before sunrise.

“Our event is sold out, we have about a couple of hundred people that are booked in to come and watch it with us,” said Andrew Jacob, curator at the Sydney Observatory, located right near the Harbour Bridge.

When the moon moves into the conical shadow of the earth, it goes from being illuminated by the sun to being dark. Some light, though, will still reach it because it is bent by the earth’s atmosphere.

“It’s called a blood moon because the light from the sun goes through the earth’s atmosphere on its way to the moon, and the earth’s atmosphere turns it red in the same way that when the sun goes down it goes red,” Andrew Fabian, professor of astronomy at the University of Cambridge, told Reuters.