2013 April lunar eclipse and May solar eclipse

With one eclipse gone, another is on its way. They always appear in pairs, two weeks apart—one at the new moon and the other at the full moon.

The first eclipse of 2013 was on Thursday April 25. It was a partial lunar eclipse in which part of the moon was obscured. It was visible in the evening in Western Europe and West Africa at moonrise, and in parts of Australia, Japan, Eastern Russia, and Indonesia it was visible at moonset. The entire eclipse was visible in Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southern Africa, India, most of China, and most of Russia.

It’s “pair” is during the full moon on Thursday May 9/Friday May 10. The second eclipse will be an annular solar eclipse in which the sun is blocked by the moon. It will be visible from Western and Northern Australia, Eastern Papua New Guinea, and the South Pacific over a wide path of between 170-225 kilometres. Starting in Western Australia at 22:33 Universal Time (UT), it will travel northeast across the Northern Territory. Depending on the location, the time of the annular phase will be from 3 minutes to about 6 minutes (in the Pacific).

The trajectory will take about 45 minutes and cover less than 1% of the Earth’s surface area. Partial phases of the solar eclipse will be visible from Australia, New Zealand, and Indonesia.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) eclipse website lists the next penumbral lunar eclipse on May 25, but this will be “almost impossible” to detect. This is an unusual second lunar eclipse of the season.

The next “pairing” of eclipses in 2013 will be a lunar eclipse on October 18 followed by a solar eclipse on November 3.

Information and images - http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse.html

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