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[[underline]]Wednesday, December 29, 1982 / B5[[/underline]]

[[image of a human's right eye with stars, a comet, and the  planet Saturn depicted in the pupil]]

[[underline]]SKYWATCH[[/underline]]

One of an occasional series to keep you looking up, with information from the U.S. Naval Observatory.

  Set your clock for 4:50 tomorrow 
morning and gaze westward if you
want to catch a total lunar eclipse 
that astronomers predict will be 
spectacularly colorful. (If you're 
tempted to sleep through it, be 
aware that the next TLE won't be 
visible here until 1989.) The lunar 
light show begins at 4:50 a.m. EST 
when the moon will begin to enter 
full shadow. "Totality"–as the scientists 
say–will begin at 5:58 EST 
and will last until 6:59 EST. The 
moon will leave the shadow of the 
Earth at 8:07 a.m., but since it will 
set here at 7:35 a.m EST, the final 
stages won't be visible in this area.

The moon never completely disappears 
during a TLE because the 
sun's rays bend and refract as they 
pass through the Earth's atmosphere. 
This causes the moon to appear 
variously colored. The colors 
could be particularly spectacular this 
year, as the result of volcanic ash in 
the atmosphere, courtesy of Mount 
St. Helens in Washington State, El 
Chichon in Mexico and perhaps 
Galuggung in Indonesia.

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