Best time to view tonight's eclipse is at 00:24

Former President of the Maldives Maumoon Abdul Gayoom has said that the best time to view tonight’s anticipated penumbral lunar eclipse is 00:24.

The former President is a profound knowledge of astronomy, said that the eclipse will begin on 22:45 and will end on 02:04.

Islamic Ministry has also announced that the eclipse will be a faint one and may even go unnoticed.

Eclipse prayers are scheduled to be performed on every island of the country, barring the islands where congregational prayers are suspended due to COVID-19. 

Islands where collective prayers are suspended for now:

• Male' City
• K. Himmafushi
• K. Thulusdhoo
• K Thulusdhoo
• N. Manadhoo
• Sh. Milandhoo
• Sh. Narudhoo

The eclipse prayers will not be held in the above-mentioned islands. Some of these islands such as Male' City are still under lockdown and monitoring mechanisms. Some islands on the list are barred due to recent monitoring mechanisms that were in place in the last 14 days. 

What is a penumbral eclipse?

A penumbral lunar eclipse happens when the Sun, Earth, and the Moon are imperfectly aligned and the Earth blocks some of the Sun’s light from directly reaching the Moon with the outer part of its shadow.

This part is called the penumbra and thus comes the name penumbral lunar eclipse. Since the penumbra is much fainter than the dark core of the Earth’s shadow, a penumbral eclipse is hard to distinguish from the normal Full Moon.

Apart from this lunar eclipse in June, the year 2020 has two more lunar eclipses to come. The third lunar eclipse of 2020 will occur in July and the fourth and last lunar eclipse will occur in November 2020. These two eclipses are also penumbral ones.