ISLAMABAD – The longest total lunar eclipse of the 21st century would occuron July 27, with the celestial spectacle visible in Pakistan and India.
The eclipse will last for 1 hour and 43 minutes, giving viewers a wonderfulopportunity to experience the happening.
It will be preceded and followed by partial eclipses lasting more than onehour.
The eclipse will be visible in parts of South America, much of Africa, theMiddle East and Central Asia. For viewers in India, the eclipse, bothpartial and the total, will be visible in its entirety from all parts ofthe country.
The partial eclipse of the moon will start around 11.54 pm Indian StandardTime, with the total eclipse beginning at 1 am on July 28.
“The greatest eclipse, when moon will look the darkest, will be at around01:52 am and the totality will continue at 02:43 am after this period themoon will remain partially eclipsed till 03:49 am of July 28,” Duari saidin a media release.
Earlier this year, there was a total lunar eclipse on January 31.
For a total lunar eclipse of a long duration to occur, the moon has to passthrough the central part of the Earth’s shadow.
The previous total lunar eclipse on January 31, lasted 1 hour and 16minutes when the moon passed to the south of shadow’s centre; and the nexttotal lunar eclipse on January 21, 2019 will be only for 1 hour and 2minutes because it’ll pass to the north of the shadow’s centre.
Late at night on July 27, the full moon will be near its apogee, thefarthest point from Earth in its orbit around Earth, and it will be thesmallest full moon of the year.
“This smaller and slower-moving full moon takes more time to cross theEarth’s shadow than does a full moon that’s closer to Earth and movingfaster in orbit. That’s why a full moon at or near lunar apogee adds to theduration of a total lunar eclipse,” Duari said
The full moon will plunge deeply into the Earth’s shadow on the night ofJuly 27-28. The distance of the Moon from Earth just before the eclipsewill be around 406,223 km.
Depending on atmospheric conditions, this could be an especially dark totallunar Eclipse. The longest possible total lunar eclipse is 1 hour and 47minutes. In this case, the centre of the lunar disk aligned almostperfectly with the centre of the Earth’s shadow.