The first lunar eclipse of the year 2020 will be witnessed in Pakistan on Friday night and end in the early hours of Saturday.

According to a private news channel, it will be penumbra lunar eclipse which will be visible in Pakistan as well as in different cities of Asia, Europe, Australia and Africa. It will not be visible in the United States, central Canada and a majority of South America.

According to APP, the eclipse will start at 10:07pm and will become a full eclipse at 12:07am. The eclipse will come to an end at 2:12am and the moon will emerge from the shadow of the earth.

During a lunar eclipse, the moon appears red because the light of the sun no longer directly illuminates it, since Earth is passing in between the moon and sun.

“The colour is due to Rayleigh scattering — where the sun’s blue light is scattered off molecules in Earth’s atmosphere — which also happens at sunsets,” explained the Royal Astronomical Society of Britain in a 2019 AFP article.

“The sun’s red light is scattered much less by air, and is bent by Earth’s atmosphere in a process called refraction, travelling all the way through it to light up the moon’s surface.”

Total or partial lunar eclipses happen at least twice a year on average.