Lunar Eclipse 2011 Shown on Google Doodle, YouTube

The great lunar eclipse of 2011 is happening right now, a majestic phenomenon that occurs when the moon, passing through Earth's shadow, turns an eerie, rusty red because of sunlight bent by Earth's distorting atmosphere.
Except that today's eclipse not visible from North America. So the Google home page is using it as its Google Doodle, showing the eclipse almost in real time, from cameras in South Africa, Dubai and the Canary Islands.
"It just sort of happened very naturally," said Anne Espiritu of Google, who described how engineers decided to turn the by-now-famous Google Doodle into a view of the eclipse. "For us, it sort of ties in with our love of geekiness and our fascination with the universe."
The picture, says Google, updates every two minutes. You'll have to refresh the page on your browser (press F5 if you have a Windows computer; Command-R on an Apple) to see the new images. They'll change slowly over the five hours the eclipse lasts. If the eclipse is well along by the time you tune in, try the slider that's part of the Google Doodle. You'll find you can play the images back and forth as a time-lapse movie, watching Earth's shadow move across the moon's face.
The images were provided by Slooh, an astronomy website that did the sky images for a layer of Google Earth. Video is also being streamed on YouTube, which Google owns, and can be seen on Android smartphones if you download an app from -- who else? -- Google.
The images are being posted on Google's sites globally (an example is here), so that even if you're in the right parts of the world but the weather is lousy, you'll have the consolation of your computer screen. (If you live in India or Singapore and found our story, please let us know.)
Click Here for More Google Doodles
There are non-Google places to look. Try the Sky Watchers Association of North Bengal in India -- SWAN for short.
Here's some eclipse information, if that's what you came looking for (this morning Google reported a spike in people searching for "solar eclipse." There was a solar eclipse, just not today -- it was seen only around the Arctic, on June 1).
You'll recall that the moon, as it circles Earth every 28 days, is almost in the same plane as Earth's orbit around the sun -- almost but not exactly. Most months, the moon passes just north or south of Earth's shadow, and we see a full moon -- the complete disc, highest in the sky at midnight.
Today's eclipse, according to Fred Espenak of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, is a particularly good one -- if you're in the right place. The moon is passing very close to the middle of the Earth's shadow, so in the right places, the moon will be at least partly covered for more than 5 1/2 hours.
A solar eclipse is the opposite: The new moon happens to pass right between the sun and Earth, and the moon's shadow, much shorter than ours, grazes a narrow strip of Earth's surface. People who flock to that strip may see the sun blocked entirely for two or three spectacular minutes. The movements of the spheres are complex but highly predictable. There have to be at least two lunar or solar eclipses each year, but there cannot be more than seven.
Click Here for Slideshow: Sky Sightings