A lunar eclipse will occur on Thursday as the full moon passes through Earth's shadow. It won't be visible in the U.S. but many web sites are broadcasting live webcasts.
This will be the first eclipse to occur in 2013. It will occur during the "Pink" full moon of April, and is thought to be the best of the upcoming eclipses that will occur this year.
The eclipse will be visible in Eastern Europe, Africa, Central Asia and Western Australia.
"It will be a great event," Gianluca Masi, an astrophysicist at the Bellatrix Astronomical Observatory, who runs the Virtual Telescope Project in Ceccano, Italy, told Space.com.
Lunar eclipses result when the moon, Earth and sun align, where the moon is positioned on the opposite side of the Earth from the sun, resulting in the Earth appearing as a shadow on the moon.
The eclipse Thursday will only be a partial lunar eclipse, so the entire Earth will not appear as a shadow. During full lunar eclipses, the moon can even take on a blood-red color resulting from the light refracted by the Earth's atmosphere.
"This will not be a spectacular event, as the moon will enter only marginally the Earth's shadow, but it will be well worth a look," said Virtual Telescope officials in a statement.
The year's other two eclipses will occur on May 25 and Oct. 18. Both will be "penumbral" lunar eclipses, meaning the moon will only pass through the outer edge, or the penumbra, of Earth's shadow.
Another cosmological event for stargazers to look forward to will occur on May 25, when the moon passes between Earth and the sun to create an annular, "ring of fire," solar eclipse, which will be visible in parts of Western Australia, eastern Papua New Guinea and other island locations in the south Pacific.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
