On 7 to 8 September 2025, a chance alignment of Earth, the Moon, and the Sun will see a good swathe of our planet bathed in the eerie red glow of a total lunar eclipse.
It will be the longest total lunar eclipse since 2022, with a totality that lingers around 1 hour and 22 minutes, during which time Earth’s satellite will appear to be dyed a deep, blood-red hue.
To make things even more exciting, the event will be visible from Australia, Asia, Africa, and Europe – which means more than 7 billion people will have a chance to see it, with some 6.2 billion able to observe the totality from beginning to end.
The Americas will mostly miss out, because it will be daytime, but Hawaii, a slice of Alaska, and a slice of Brazil will have a chance to see at least a partial eclipse.
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A total lunar eclipse is what happens when Earth passes precisely between the Sun and the Moon in a straight line. As Earth slides in front of the Moon, the planet blocks most of the light from the Sun reaching the surface of the Moon.
Rather than disappearing completely, however, the usually silvery Moon takes on a deep red tinge. This is because only some of the Sun’s rays – the longest wavelengths at the red end of the spectrum – are able to pass through Earth’s atmosphere to reach the Moon beyond, while shorter, bluer wavelengths are scattered by the atmosphere. It’s the same mechanism that turns the sky red at sunset.
From beginning to end, the entire eclipse will last for about five and a half hours, starting at 15:28:25 GMT and ending at 20:55:08 GMT. The totality will commence at 17:30:48 GMT, and finish at 18:52:51 GMT.
There’s a handy tool to convert GMT to your local time here. Alternatively, you can visit Timeanddate.com and let it know your location to find out what time you should try looking at the sky.
Lunar eclipses don’t occur in isolation. The straight-line arrangement of Sun, Earth, and Moon presents optimum conditions for eclipses – which means that a lunar eclipse always occurs two weeks before or after a solar eclipse.
In this case, a partial solar eclipse is going to take place on 21 September 2025 – but only people in New Zealand, Antarctica, various Pacific islands, and a very thin strip of Australia’s east coast are going to be in a good position to see it. Sad trombone.