Feb. 13, 2008: On Wednesday evening, February 20th, the full Moon over the Americas will turn a delightful shade of red and possibly turquoise, too. It's a total lunar eclipse—the last one until Dec. 2010.

The Sun goes down. The Moon comes up. You go out and look at the sky. Observing the eclipse is that easy. Maximum eclipse, and maximum beauty, occurs at 10:26 pm EST (7:26 pm PST).



Above: A preview of the Feb. 20th lunar eclipse created by graphic artist Larry Koehn.

A lunar eclipse happens when the Moon passes through the shadow of Earth. You might expect the Moon to grow even more ashen than usual, but in fact it transforms into an orb of vivid red.

Why red? That is the color of Earth's shadow.

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To catch the turquoise on Feb. 20th, he advises, "look during the first and last minutes of totality." That would be around 10:01 pm EST and 10:51 pm EST (7:01 and 7:51 pm PST).

Blood red, bright orange, gentle turquoise: it's all good. Mark your calendar in vivid color for the Feb. 20th lunar eclipse.


Editor's note: This story is written for an American audience, but not only Americans can see the eclipse. People in Europe and western Africa are also favored. International maps and timetables may be found here.


Source

don't forget to say kiddush levanah before the eclipse

Why?

It depends whom one asks, but there is an opinion that you can say kiddush levanah only until an eclipse. There are other opinions that you can say it after until however long you hold.

Basically it goes like this:
As we all know, the time from one molad to the next is 29 days, 12 hours, 793 parts. You can say kiddush levanah starting from...well, it depends whom one asks. But let's say 72 hours from the molad. So whatever time they announce the molad, you can say kiddush levanah as early as 72 hours from that time.

(Obviously there are different opinions, and of course there is the popular conception that it needs to be said only after 7 days, or on a motza'ei shabbat, but let's assume from 72 hours is ok)

Now the other caveat is how to determine when 72 hours is [or whatever you hold]. Let's pretend that the molad time they announce is Jerusalem time. So molad Adar aleph this year was a thursday, 2 hours, 6 minutes and 5 chalakim. So let's also pretend that the molad clock starts 6 hours after mean solar noon, or 11:39AM Israel Standard Time. Which means the molad clock starts 6 hours later at 5:39 PM IST, to the molad was Thursday [really Wednesday night = Yom Chamishi] 7:45 PM and 5 chalakim. Let's ignore the chalakim.
So you can start saying kiddush levanah 72 hours later, motzaei shabbat 7:45 PM IST. In NYC, that's what, 7 hours ealier? so in theory from 12:45 PM EST, but of course you have to wait till night time.

So much for starting kiddush levanah.

For the latest time, let's pretend we hold like the Rama, so we have half of 29 d 12 h 793 p from the molad, which is exactly the midpoint between the past and the next moladot. Work it out, and it's a Yom Chamishi, 20 h 28 minutes and 5.5 chalakim, a little over two weeks later. To convert it to EST, we do the same thing we did above:
The clock starts at 5:39 PM IST. Twenty hours and 28 minutes later is 4:17 PM IST. [Did I do the math right?] Now convert that to EST with the 7 hour time difference. That's the latest you can say kiddush levanah, if that's how you hold. Obviously, again, it depends whom one asks.

Anyway, the thing about the latest time for kiddush levanah is what happens when there is an eclipse. In theory, you can say kiddush levanah as long as the moon is waxing. That is to say, the midpoint between moladot. But really, it's the midpoint between lunar conjunctions. Now the thing about eclipses is that they can only happen exactly midway between lunar conjunctions. So some poskim hold that regardless of what our calculations for the moladot are, if there is an eclipse, that's necessarily the midpoint between moladot and the latest you can say kiddush levanah.

Other poskim hold differently.