Lunar Eclipse: Earth gets best view of Mars in 6 years

April 15, 2014 7:00 PM | Skymet Weather Team

The lucky ones got the best view of two beautiful celestial events last night. There different kind of alignments, which does not depend on weather or clear skies, were at work on 14th April.

Firstly, the Red Planet Mars got closer to Earth in its journey around the Sun and was only 1000 km away from our planet. On looking at the south-eastern sky one could see the reddish star, outshining even Sirius, as it made the closest approach to Earth in more than 6 years.

Most of the time moon is just above or below Earth’s shadow but this month it plunged right through. The second spectacular display was the Lunar eclipse. In the wee hours of Tuesday, moon arrived at full phase and the Earth started cutting out the moon at 1:58 am EDT (Eastern Daylight Time) and overshadowed it completely at 3:06 am EDT. To the naked eye, moon looked like a dull penny as the sunset rays coloured it bloody red.

It was an unusual event as the moon never really disappears. From the moon there one could see a total eclipse of the sun as Earth blocked its light and also a ring of red around the edge of the Earth. Mars was clearly visible even from well-lit cities across the world.

picturecourtesy- pray 4 zion

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