VOA · Science & Technology
Intermediate · B1–B2learner speed4:362025-03-10public domain
Science & Technology reports explain discoveries and inventions in plain English. Technical terms are always introduced with context, making this program a low-stress way to build the science vocabulary that exam listening loves to test.
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01A total lunar eclipse is about to make the moon appear a reddish color across the Western Hemisphere.
02The event will happen Thursday night into Friday morning.
03The best places to see the eclipse will be in North America and South America.
04Parts of Africa and Europe may also get brief views.
05A lunar eclipse happens when the sun, earth, and moon line up just right, with earth positioned between the sun and moon.
06This causes the earth to create a shadow on the moon.
07In a total lunar eclipse, the earth's shadow covers all of the moon.
08Another kind of eclipse is a solar eclipse.
09In a solar eclipse, the moon gets in a position where it blocks light from the sun, causing a partial or full shadow on earth.
10A total lunar eclipse can also be called a blood moon.
11It makes the moon appear reddish-orange, similar to the element copper.
12The color comes from small amounts of sunlight passing through the Earth's atmosphere.
13The American space agency NASA says lunar and solar eclipses happen between four and seven times a year.
14The last total lunar eclipse was in 2022.
15This one will be visible for about one hour, starting Friday morning at 2.26 a.m.
16Eastern Daylight Time, or EDT.
17The time when the Earth's shadow covers all of the moon will be close to 3 a.m.
18EDT.
19As long as the sky is clear, you should be able to see it, Shannon Schmoll told the Associated Press.
20She is the director of Abrams Planetarium at Michigan State University.
21No special equipment will be needed to see the reddish moon.
22The total lunar eclipse may be harder to see in Europe and Africa because the moon will be close to setting.
23Michael Faison is an astronomy expert from Yale University.
24He told the AP, This is really an eclipse for North and South America.
25Zoe Ortiz is a historian with the University of North Texas.
26She noted that different civilizations have observed lunar eclipses for thousands of years.
27This helped ancient people learn things about the behaviors of the sun, moon, and stars.
28They were looking at the night sky and they had a much brighter vision than we do today, Ortiz said.
29The ancient Greek thinker and writer Aristotle observed that Earth's shadow on the moon during a lunar eclipse was always curved.
30This fact supported proof that the Earth is round.
31The next total lunar eclipse will appear in the sky September 7th, across parts of Asia, Africa, Australia, and Europe.
32Parts of the Americas will get the next chance to see one in March 2026.
33I'm Katie Weaver.
34I'm Katie Weaver.
35I'm Katie Weaver.
36I'm Katie Weaver.
37I'm Katie Weaver.
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