Lunar Eclipse at the South Pole

Explanation: Last May 16 the Moon slid through Earth's shadow, completely immersed in the planet's dark umbra for about 1 hour and 25 minutes during a total lunar eclipse. In this composited timelapse view, the partial and total phases of the eclipse were captured as the Moon tracked above the horizon from Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. There it shared a cold and starry south polar night with a surging display of the aurora australis and central Milky Way. In the foreground are the BICEP (right) and South Pole telescopes at the southernmost station's Dark Sector Laboratory. But while polar skies can be spectacular, you won't want to go to the South Pole to view the total lunar eclipse coming up on November 8. Instead, that eclipse can be seen from locations in Asia, Australia, the Pacific, the Americas and Northern Europe. It will be your last chance to watch a total lunar eclipse until 2025.

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Is the dark ball familiar? It could be because it is our Sun. A detailed solar view was captured in a very specific color of red light, then rendered in black and white, and then color inverted, in the featured image from 2012 The image was added to a starfield and then inverted. There is a carpet of hot gas visible in the image of the Sun. During Solar Maximum, the time when the Sun's surface magnetic field is the most active, the surface can be busy. When the Earth's magnetosphere is impacted by the sun's activity, the atmosphere can become picturesque.