City’s keen star-gazers watch lunar eclipse

Karachi 

People in Karachi and several other parts of the country witnessed a penumbral lunar eclipse when the moon started passing through the outer edge of the earth’s shadow at 9:55pm on Friday.

A complete eclipse was witnessed at 11:55pm and it culminated at 1:54am in Pakistan, Meteorological Department officials said.

A penumbral lunar eclipse occurs when the sun, the earth and the moon align in an almost straight line. When this happens, the earth blocks some of the sun’s light from directly reaching the moon’s surface, and covers a part of the moon with the outer part of its shadow, also known as penumbra. “Penumbral lunar eclipse is not visible through naked eye as the moon passes through the outer edge of the earth’s shadow,” Director Met Office Karachi Abdur Rashid told The News.

He said the full moon eclipse is known Umbra, which occurs when the dark shadow of the earth falls on the moon, but this phenomenon did not happen on the night between Friday and Saturday.

He said this was the second penumbral eclipse of the year as the first such eclipse was observed in March this year in Pakistan. He added that it was part of normal astronomical phenomena, which happened regularly in our space. The lunar eclipse is also the last eclipse of 2016. “A penumbral lunar eclipse is different from a solar eclipse, the most commonly sighted eclipse on earth.

A penumbral lunar eclipse occurs when the moon swiftly passes through the dimmer, fainter outer part of the earth’s shadow. Because of its nature, it can be mistaken as a full moon.”

The moon typically reflects the sun’s ray, but during a lunar eclipse, the earth is strategically positioned in between the sun and the moon that blocks the sunlight from reaching the moon. Rashid maintained that in a penumbral lunar eclipse, the sun, the moon and the earth were in a straight alignment. During this time, the earth blocked some of the sun’s ray from reaching the moon’s surface and covered parts of the moon with its shadows, and the Sun covering the moon with its outer shadow was called “penumbra”, he said.

This year’s penumbral lunar eclipse was visible in most regions of Pakistan and in some parts of Africa, Europe and Asia.

“The Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) is closely monitoring the last eclipse of the year,” Rashid added. He urged the people, especially women, not to consider lunar and solar eclipses as some kind of supernatural events, saying they had no effect on the health of people or the condition of unborn or newly-born children.