On the evening of Thursday, August 27th, a beautiful eclipse of the Moon will be visible throughout North America. In a lunar eclipse, the Moon and the Sun are exactly opposite each other in our sky, and the Earth gets between them. This means the Earth’s shadow falls on the full Moon, slowly darkening and reddening it.  On Aug. 27, 96% of the Moon’s area will be covered by the shadow, making for a dramatic, and easy-to-see evening spectacle.

This kind of eclipse is perfectly safe to look at with your eyes or binoculars.

Feel free to share the information with family and friends.  Hope you get a chance to see it.

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Speaking of eclipses, you might have seen the media coverage of the total eclipse of the Sun on August 12, visible from Spain and other countries on that side of the world.  Many astronomers and astronomy enthusiasts braved the 100-degree plus temperatures of the European heat wave to see this brief sky spectacular, which is much more rare than the lunar eclipse I previewed above.

Total eclipses of the Sun are one of nature’s most splendiferous sights.  And they are made possible by a remarkable coincidence — the Sun as seen from Earth, and the Moon as seen from Earth happen to be the same size. So the Moon can exactly cover the Sun, and allow its faint fluttering atmosphere to become visible. Search out some of the pictures on the Web from the Aug. 12 eclipse to show you what I mean.

Astronomers have calculated whether this exact coincidence is true for any other planet-moon combination in our solar system, and it appears to be unique to Earth.  This is the basis of my short, fun science-fiction story, “Eclipsed,” where tourists from much further away want to share our enjoyment of total eclipses of the Sun.  You can read it at: http://bit.ly/eclipsedsfstory