Few days ago I wrote about the night sky and planets in February 2008. In that post I said few words about the full lunar eclipse that can be watched early tomorrow. Full lunar eclipse is a phenomenon in which the Moon is covered by the shadow of the planet Earth. In full lunar eclipse the Sun, the Earth and the Moon are all nicely aligned. The lunar eclipse is a beautiful phenomenon which I strongly recommend to watch. Before you decide to wake up at 3 am, check the weather forecast in your area. Right now it is snowing heavily here in Finland, which indicates that bad visibility for the night.

During a lunar eclipse the Moon step by step goes behind the shadow of the Earth. In February 21st in 2008 (in northern Europe) this will start happening at about 3 am. in Helsinki in Finland. As the first image below shows, the shadow of the Earth starts to cover the Moon upper-left corner. Gradually it covers the Moon, until about 5:30 am. in Helsinki the Moon is in full eclipse, as shown in the second image below. In third image below you can see that the shadow of the Earth starts uncover the Moon at about 6:30 am. in Helsinki time. Please, check the viewing time in your location. In Finland the lunar eclipse can be seen in early morning, but for example in Winnipeg in Canada it can be seen 3.5 hours after sunset. The direction in which it can be seen in Winnipeg is South-East, while in Finland the direction is West.

What makes this lunar eclipse even more interesting, is that you can see also Saturn and Regulus located very close to the Moon. If you have a telescope, you can observe the disks of Saturn while waiting for the lunar eclipse to proceed.

I recommend you to check the weather forecast first, and if it looks good, estimate your viewing time. Then drive to countryside or some dark location in order to avoid artificial lights. Make sure you have a camera with you. Shoot pictures as the lunar eclipse proceeds and send few pictures to me (marko.pyhajarvi AT gmail.com) in order to publish them here in HomeboyAstronomy.Com. Sounds good? Great!

You can observe the lunar eclipse by the naked eye or by using binoculars. The whole phenomenon lasts about six hours, so make sure you have some coffee with you if you go observing it outside. The deepest eclipse lasts about 51 minutes and the color of the moon is dark red during the eclipse. The next full moon eclipse in this latitude can be seen in December 12th. in 2010, so make sure you will see it tomorrow!