When we look at the night sky, we are seeing the history of all that has been and the conditions that will define all that will be. You just need to know where to look.

One of my favorite pieces of science learned as a child is that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs while spreading a layer of iridium over the planet and creating weird features called cenotes in the Yucatan peninsula that allowed civilizations to thrive geologic epochs later.

On any given night, you can go out and easily photograph asteroids moving across the sky if you just have a way to track your camera or a telescope with a camera. Tracking means your camera changes its position to move with the stars across the sky. Since asteroids move faster, you can see them as jumping dots, moving between images in a series. 

The best place to look for these wandering stars is along that band across the sky called the ecliptic. This band is both where the Sun can be seen and where the planets move in their orbit, and it represents the disk of our pretty flat solar system. This line is making itself easy to find right now. Looking west at dusk, you can see the line of Venus, Mercury, and Mars with the Moon rising fairly high in the sky. 

As the night progresses, the worlds will sink, and to the east, Saturn and Jupiter will rise late, rising up to define the eastern path of this band. Software like SkySafari can help you identify these worlds. It uses your phone’s sensors to tell you what is in the sky behind your device as you look around. Go out, look up, look at our solar system, and know that you now know roughly what part of the sky hides a dinosaur-killing rock.

All of that geometry leads to a pair of special events that occur during what we call eclipse season. “Season” is a bit of a misnomer. It’s not a season like spring or summer; it’s a period of time when we get a pair of eclipses: one lunar and one solar eclipse. Now, these eclipses aren’t always or even usually total eclipses; they don’t block out the Moon or Sun completely every time. And every pair of events is different. But this pair happens to have a total lunar eclipse, which makes it exciting.

This total lunar eclipse will happen on May 26, and it will be a short one. Totality, that period when the Moon is completely covered by the Earth’s shadow, will last just over fourteen minutes. We get a bit of a bonus here because it’s also the closest full moon of 2021, making it a supermoon. According to EarthSky: This total lunar eclipse is visible from western North America, southern and far-western South America, the Pacific Ocean, New Zealand, Australia, and Southeast Asia.

From the Americas, you’ll want to be up early in the morning, before sunrise. From the Eastern Hemisphere, you’ll want to go out at sunset. The Moon will either be setting or rising, respectively, and then you can watch it move into and out of Earth’s shadow, turning red during totality. Unlike a solar eclipse, you don’t need any special gear to watch a lunar eclipse, so get out and take some pictures. We’ll have all the exact times and charts on our website at DailySpace.org.

But what about if you’re not in a region that will see the total eclipse? Well, the good news is that if you’re in the rest of the Americas or the eastern half of Asia, you’ll get a partial umbral eclipse where Earth’s shadow will take a bite out of the Moon. Sorry, Africa and Europe. The geometry doesn’t work out for you this time. You will, however, get the opportunity to view next month’s annular solar eclipse on June 10. We’ll talk more about that event when we get closer.

More Information

May-June 2021: A Special Pair Of Eclipses (EarthSky)

Why Not An Eclipse At Every Full And New Moon? (EarthSky)

Dawn Delight: Catch the Total Lunar Eclipse on May 26th (Sky & Telescope)