Lunar eclipse-June 15 2011-the darkest night in 100 years

A total lunar eclipse will be observed today, June 15 2011, the longest lunar eclipse of the century and of the last 100 years.

The Moon, Earth and Sun will be lined up exactly on the same axis, the Moon and the Sun being in opposite side of the earth.
The moon will pass through the center of Earth's shadow producing a total lunar eclipse viewed from the earth and a total sun eclipse on the moon.
During this spectacular astronomical phenomena, the moon will change different colors in shades from orange to dark red.

In the following chart you can see the timeline of the entire astrological spectacle according to universal time:

photo source: wikipedia.org

The lunar eclipse will begin at 17:23/UT/, when the Moon enters the penumbral cone of the Earth and the end is expected at 23:02/UT/. The complete phase will last 5 hours and 39 min. The moon will be totally eclipsed for 1 hour and 40 min.

Visibility:

This rare phenomena will be visible to the naked eye for more than half of the globe, in much of Europe, including us, in Romania, South Asia and Indian Ocean region countries. Instead, it can not be observed in Canada and the U.S. In western Asia, Australia and the Philippines, the lunar eclipse will be visible just before sunrise.

On the night of 15 to 16 June the lunar eclipse will be observed in Romania too, an 1 hour and 40 minutes of total darkness. I hope we will have a clear night, so tomorrow we can see some great photos of this fantastic event.

The previous major lunar eclipse was on July 16, 2000, lasting for 107 min. and being the longest one of the last century, lasting 107 min. This year, a second, total lunar eclipse will take place on December 10, 2011.

Update:
Unfortunately, not even a star was visible on the evening sky in our parts. Thought it was a bright, sunny day all day long, at sunset the sky was uniformly covered with something that looked like smoke.