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Offenbach (AP) – Excited people watch Friday night in the evening sky and wait for the moon. Here and there, the clouds delay its spectacular appearance, but then it is there: reddish and shimmering, flanked by a brilliant Mars.
Throughout Germany, the extraordinary celestial event was observed in observatories, watchtowers or terraces – it was the longest lunar eclipse
of the 21st century, which was joined by a particularly close and brilliant Mars.
"It was a lunar eclipse of picture book," said Sven Melchert, president of the Sternfreunde Association, on the Saturday Sky Show. The total darkness lasted about 103 minutes. Meanwhile, the earthly moon was only pale in the sky. Gradually, the Earth's shadow continued to move until the moon began to radiate on the left edge.
The amateur astronomer Melchert saw the moon for the first time around 9:40 pm, "in the form of a weak red disc rusting in the gray-blue twilight". Like a "pearl", the red planet Mars shone next: "Really chic". A similar position on Mars was last seen 15 years ago. The lunar eclipses duo and the great Mars is a unique event for people currently living. It will not be until June 9, 2123, that there will be another similar lunar eclipse.
In the north, west and south, the view of the two glowing celestial bodies was quite good in many places. The German Meteorological Service has reported isolated clouds for these areas. Less fortunate had distant parts of Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony and Thuringia. There, many watched storm clouds instead of a starry sky. Clouds were hovering over Berlin, but during the night the view of the moon was fading away. Always on the edge of the Alps, the event was not visible everywhere.
Hundreds of people watched the Sky Show on the Norderney beach on the North Sea. "Hundreds of people" also counted Stefan Krause of the Bonn Public Observatory while observing on the old customs of the Rhine bank. In Frankfurt, lunar observers triggered a little chaos in traffic: according to the police, they simply left their cars on a main road or in orchards.
A lunar eclipse occurs only when the moon is full – when the sun, the earth and the moon are exactly on a line. The moon is completely immersed in the shadows that the sunlit earth throws into space.
Astronaut Alexander Gerst, who is currently on the ISS space station, has watched him particularly well. The ISS was also visible in the sky for a short time next to the moon and Mars. Gerst posted a photo in the evening at the Twitter Short Message Service and wrote, "Just a photo of the #Mond Eclipse made by the International Space Station." The light blue cast comes from the atmosphere just before that the moon is "submerged".
Mars is considered a red planet anyway. But why did the moon shine red? The short wave blue light waves of the sun's rays are according to experts completely dispersed in the Earth's atmosphere. On the other hand, the long wave red light is broken and directed towards the moon.
In social media, many people took care of the spectacle of the sky. "I think the idea is somehow gorgeous as the whole world looks at the moon today," wrote one on Twitter. In Aachen, the moon was spotted at 22:32, was a tweet from North Rhine-Westphalia. On the other hand, someone else complained: "Where is the goddess of the land now? Nothing to do in Hamburg". Another wrote: "Clouds, please, leave quickly, I do not want to wait another 105,000 years for this event.
DWD on the lunar eclipse
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