On the night of 15th June 2011 more than half the world will have opportunity to watch one of the darkest Lunar eclipses.
This will be the darkest lunar eclipse in almost 100 years as the centres of the sun, the earth and the moon would nearly be on one straight line. The earlier darkest lunar eclipse was observed on August 6, 1971 and the next one would be 47 years from now on, on June 6, 2058…
People leaving in eastern Africa, the Middle East, central Asia and western Australia will have opportunity to observe the entire eclipse, from beginning to end. At mid- eclipse the Moon will be over head at Mauritius.
Total Lunar Eclipse (Chandra Grahan), on June 15, 2011 will be visible in India, Dubai, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia and western parts of Australia. The Chandra Graham will be taking place in India between 11:53 pm on June 15 to 03:32 am early morning on June 16, 2011. Total Lunar Eclipse – the moon is fully covered – is from 00:52 hrs to 02:33 hrs. The eclipse’s total phase lasts for 100 minutes.
http://deshgujarat.com/2011/06/14/lunar-eclipse-on-15-june-2011the-darkest-night-in-100-years/
The longest total lunar eclipse since July 2000 will occur on Wednesday (June 15), with skywatchers in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Australia in prime position to witness the moon treat.
The event is the first lunar eclipse of 2011 and one of two total lunar eclipses this year. The eclipse, which will occur during June’s full moon, will begin at 1:24 p.m. EDT (1724 GMT) and last until 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT), but it will not be visible from North America.
For observers in regions where it will be visible, the eclipse could offer an amazing sight: the period of totality will be 100 minutes. In the last 100 years, only three other eclipses have rivaled the duration of totality of this eclipse, according to SPACE.com’s skywatching columnist Joe. Rao. The last lunar eclipse of similar length occured on July 16, 2000 and lasted 107 minutes.
http://www.space.com/11941-extra-long-total-lunar-eclipse-occurs-wednesday.html
[…] Other than the near perfect alignment of these solar system bodies, atmosphere plays its role too to make the eclipsed Moon really very dark. This eclipse of June 15th is likely to be one of the darkest one due to the ashes thrown in the Earth’s atmosphere by the recent eruption of Iceland’s most active volcano, Grimsvotn and the volcano in Chile. Read more, click here […]