Partial lunar eclipse on July 16 to be visible from Bulgaria
The partial lunar eclipse on the night of July 16 into July 17, the last one in 2019, will be visible from Bulgaria.
The penumbral eclipse, when the Earth’s penumbra starts touching the face of the Moon, begins at 9.43pm.
The partial eclipse begins just after 11pm, when the moon will start turning red. The eclipse will be at its maximum at 12.30am on Wednesday, and ends at 1.59am. The penumbral eclipse ends at 3.17am.
The UK’s Royal Astronomical Society said that the eclipse, 50 years to the day after the launch of Apollo 11, will also be seen across a large part of Asia, the whole of Africa, the eastern part of South America, and the western part of Australia.
In a lunar eclipse, the Earth, Sun, and Moon are almost exactly in line and the Moon is on the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun. The Moon is full, moves into the shadow of the Earth and dims dramatically but usually remains visible, lit by sunlight that passes through the Earth’s atmosphere.
Stronger atmospheric scattering of blue light means that the light that reaches the lunar surface is predominantly red in colour, so for observers on Earth the eclipsed part of the Moon may be brick-coloured, rusty, blood red, or sometimes dark grey, depending on terrestrial conditions, the Royal Astronomical Society said.
(Photo: flickr.com/Ibrahim Asad Photography)