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What can observers expect to see happen during a lunar eclipse? Check out our guide to learn about the different phases of this celestial event.

No enthusiastic skywatcher ever misses a total eclipse of the moon. People are often surprised by how beautiful and engaging the spectacle is. Because of this hypnotizing beauty, during the time that the moon is going into, and later emerging from, the Earth’s shadow, secondary phenomena may be overlooked.

To help prepare for the upcoming supermoon lunar eclipse of Sept. 27 to 28, Space.com’s Joe Rao, a veteran of sixteen total lunar eclipses — has prepared an eclipse chronology. It is likely that not all of the events mentioned will occur, because no two eclipses are exactly alike. But many will, and those who know what to look for have a better chance of seeing them! [Supermoon Lunar Eclipse: When and How to See It]

In the above timetable, all un-italicized times are for p.m. on September 27. Times in italics are a.m. on September 28. When dashes are provided, it means that the moon has not yet risen above the horizon. The eclipse will be visible to more than half the planet — check here to see if it will be visible in your area.

Many European countries are currently observing “summertime,” which is 1 or 2 hours ahead of GMT.

Newfoundland is 30 minutes ahead of Atlantic Daylight Time (ADT).

Puerto Rico is on Atlantic Standard Time, which is the same as Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

Arizona is on Mountain Standard Time, which is the same as Pacific Daylight Time (PDT).

Alaska is 1 hour behind PDT; Hawaii is 2 hours behind PDT. 

The various stages, fully described:

1) Moon enters penumbra: The shadow cone of the Earth has two parts: A dark, inner umbra, surrounded by a lighter penumbra. The penumbra is the pale, outer portion of the Earth’s shadow. Although the eclipse officially begins when the moon enters the penumbra, this is in essence an academic event — you won’t see anything unusual happening to the moon, at least not just yet. The Earth’s penumbral shadow is so faint that it remains invisible until the moon is deeply immersed in it. We must wait until the penumbra has spread roughly 70 percent across the moon’s disk. For about the next 40 minutes, the full moon will continue to appear to shine normally, although with each passing minute it is progressing ever deeper into the Earth’s outer shadow.

2) Penumbral shadow begins to appear: Now the moon has progressed far enough into the penumbra that it should be evident on the moon’s disk. Start looking for a very subtle, light shading to appear on the moon’s left portion. This will become increasingly evident as the minutes pass; the shading will appear to spread and deepen. Just before the moon begins to enter the Earth’s dark umbral shadow, the penumbra should appear as an obvious smudge, or tarnishing, of the moon’s left portion.

3) Moon enters umbra: The moon now begins to cross into the Earth’s dark central shadow, called the umbra. A small, dark scallop shape begins to appear on the moon’s left-hand (eastern) limb. The partial phases of the eclipse begin; the pace quickens, and the change is dramatic. The umbra is much darker than the penumbra and is fairly sharp-edged. As the minutes pass, the dark shadow appears to slowly creep across the moon’s face. At first, the moon’s limb may seem to vanish completely inside of the umbra, but much later, as it moves in deeper, you’ll probably notice it glowing dimly orange, red or brown. Notice also that the edge of the Earth’s shadow projected on the moon is curved. Here is visible evidence that the Earth is a sphere, as deduced by Aristotle from Iunar eclipses he observed in the fourth century B.C. Almost as if a dimmer switch were slowly being turned down, the surrounding landscape and deep shadows of a brilliant, moonlit night begin to fade away.

4) 75 percent coverage: With three-quarters of the moon’s disk now eclipsed, that part of it that is immersed in shadow should begin to very faintly light up — similar to a piece of iron heated to the point where it just begins to glow. It now becomes obvious that the umbral shadow is not completely dark. Using binoculars or a telescope, observers can usually see that its outer part is light enough to reveal lunar seas and craters, but the central part is usually much darker, and sometimes no surface features are recognizable. Colors in the umbra vary greatly from one eclipse to the next. Reds and grays usually predominate, but sometimes observers see browns, blues and other tints.

5) Less than 5 minutes to totality: Several minutes before (and after) totality, the contrast between the remaining pale-yellow sliver and the ruddy-brown coloration that is spread over the rest of the moon’s disk may produce a beautiful phenomenon known to some as the Japanese Lantern Effect.

6) Total eclipse begins: When the last of the moon enters the umbra, the total eclipse begins. How the moon will appear during totality is not known. Some eclipses are such a dark gray-black color that the moon nearly vanishes from view. At other eclipses it can glow a bright orange. The reason the moon can be seen at all when totally eclipsed is that sunlight is scattered and refracted around the edge of the Earth by our atmosphere. To an astronaut standing on the moon during totality, the sun would be hidden behind a dark Earth outlined by a brilliant red ring consisting of all the world’s sunrises and sunsets. The brightness of this ring around the Earth depends on global weather conditions and the amount of dust suspended in the air. A clear atmosphere on Earth means a bright lunar eclipse. If a major volcanic eruption has injected particles into the stratosphere during the previous couple of years, the eclipse is very dark. But, as of this writing, no such major eruption has happened, so the betting is that this eclipse will be relatively bright. [Lunar Eclipse Beauty: How to Photograph the Moon]

7) Middle of totality: The moon is now shining anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 times more faintly than it was just a couple of hours ago. Since the moon is moving to the south of the center of the Earth’s umbra, the gradation of color and brightness across the moon’s disk should be such that its upper portion will appear darkest, with hues of deep copper or chocolate brown. Meanwhile, its lower portion — that part of the moon closest to the outer edge of the umbra — should appear to be the brightest, with hues of reds, oranges and even perhaps a soft bluish-white color.

Those who are observing away from bright city lights will notice that many more stars are visible in the later night sky than they were earlier.

The darkness of the sky is impressive. The surrounding landscape has taken on a somber hue. Before the eclipse, the full moon looked flat and one dimensional. During totality, however, it will look smaller and three dimensional — like some weirdly illuminated ball suspended in space.

Before the moon entered the Earth’s shadow, the temperature on parts of its sunlit surface hovered as high as 266 degrees Fahrenheit (130 degrees Celsius). Since the moon lacks an atmosphere, there is no way that this heat could be retained; it escapes into space as the shadow sweeps by. Now that it’s in shadow, the temperature on the moon has dropped to minus 146 degrees F (99 degrees below zero C). That’s a drop of 412 degrees F (229 degrees C) in less than 90 minutes!

8) Total eclipse ends: The emergence of the moon from the shadow begins. The first small segment of the moon begins to reappear, possibly followed again for the next several minutes by the Japanese Lantern Effect.

9) 75 percent coverage: Any vestiges of coloration within the umbra should be disappearing now. From here on, as the dark shadow methodically creeps off the moon’s disk, it should appear black and featureless.

10) Moon leaves umbra: The dark central shadow clears the moon’s right hand (western) limb.

11) Penumbral shadow fades away: As the last, faint shading vanishes from the moon’s right portion, the visual show comes to an end.

12) Moon leaves penumbra: The eclipse “officially” ends, as the moon is completely free of the penumbral shadow.

Editor’s note: If you capture an amazing photo of the supermoon lunar eclipse and want to share it with Space.com for a story or gallery, send images and comments in to managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.

The Stern family of Colorado spent their Fourth of July holiday in weightlessness during a Zero Gravity Corporation flight on July 4, 2010. Credit: Steve Boxall/Zero-G

A company that makes some of the thrills of spaceflight more accessible to regular folks has hit a major milestone — 10 years of weightless flights.

The Virginia-based Zero Gravity Corp. (Zero G) has now been flying customers on a specially modified Boeing 727 jet for a decade. The plane, known as G-Force One, flies in parabolic arcs that generate brief periods of weightlessness.

Customers usually pay $4,950 for this experience, which can be exhilirating and nauseating at the same time. (G-Force One is sometimes referred to as a “vomit comet.”) But the company is knocking 20 percent off the price for all future flights this year.

“We’ve flown over 500 weightless flights with more than 12,000 clients, including notables like Stephen Hawking, James Cameron, Kate Upton, Halle Berry, Martha Stewart, Sharon & Ozzy Osbourne and Rob Dyrdek. It’s been amazing!” Terese Brewster, ZERO-G president and chief operating officer, said in a statement. “In celebration of our 10-year anniversary, we want to say ‘thank you’ by discounting all remaining 2015 seats.”

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

The Veil Nebula was observed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Image released Sept. 24, 2015.
CREDIT: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team

The gorgeous, multicolored remnants of a destroyed star shimmer in stunning new images by the Hubble Space Telecope.

The new set of Hubble photos of the Veil Nebula, which researchers combined into several stunning videos, show a colorful cloud of material 110 light-years wide that lies about 2,100 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus (The Swan).

The Veil Nebula was observed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Image released Sept. 24, 2015.
Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team

The Veil Nebula’s beauty belies its violent origins: The structure formed about 8,000 years ago, after a star 20 times more massive than the sun died in a supernova explosion, researchers said.

“Astronomers suspect that before the Veil Nebula’s source star exploded, it expelled a strong stellar wind. This wind blew a large cavity into the surrounding interstellar gas,” officials with the European Space Agency (ESA), which operates Hubble jointly with NASA, said in a statement.

The Veil supernova remnant and the surrounding sky appear in this image.
Credit: NASA, ESA, Digitized Sky Survey 2; Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin

“As the shock wave from the supernova expands outwards, it encounters the walls of this cavity — and forms the nebula’s distinctive structures,” they added. “Bright filaments are produced as the shock wave interacts with a relatively dense cavity wall, whilst fainter structures are generated by regions nearly devoid of material. The Veil Nebula’s colorful appearance is generated by variations in the temperatures and densities of the chemical elements present.”

To see the Veil Nebula in 3D, use red-blue glasses.
Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team

Features that appear blue in the new images, for example, contain hotter gas than do green and red structures, researchers said.

Hubble also photographed the Veil Nebula back in 1997, so the new images are helping astronomers gauge how the gas cloud has evolved and expanded over the last 18 years. (The 1997 views were captured by Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, whereas the new photos were taken by the observatory’s Wide Field Camera 3, which spacewalking astronauts installed in 2009.)

This stereo image of the Veil Nebula uses observations made by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in 1997 and in 2015. Cross your eyes to see the 3D effect.
Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team

The Hubble Space Telescope launched in April 1990. The observatory’s initial images were blurry, and mission scientists soon discovered why — Hubble’s 7.9-foot-wide (2.4 meters) primary mirror was slightly flawed.

But astronauts fixed the problem in 1993, and Hubble began beaming to Earth the amazing, supersharp images it’s famous for today. Four additional servicing missions between 1997 and 2009 further repaired and upgraded the observatory, which operators say should keep going strong through at least 2020.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Many people believe alien life capable of communication is out there …
CREDIT: NASA

Are humans alone in the universe? A majority of people, particularly guys, in the United States, United Kingdom and Germany say they believe that intelligent life is out there.

Fifty-six percent of Germans, 54 percent of Americans and 52 percent of people from the United Kingdom believe that alien life capable of communication lives somewhere among the stars, according to a new survey by the marketing research firm YouGov.

However, in the United Kingdom at least, people are slightly cautious about whether humans should reach out to E.T. Among U.K. respondents, 46 percent said a digital message should be sent into space in the hopes that it reaches intelligent aliens. Another 33 percent said no message should be sent, and 21 percent said they weren’t sure. [7 Things Most Often Mistaken for UFOs]

Searching for E.T.

Humanity has long wondered whether it is alone in the universe, and the search is on to find the answer. The SETI Institute in California, for example, uses radio telescopes to hunt for signals from alien civilizations.

Allen Telescope Array
Credit: SETI.org

In July, physicist Stephen Hawking backed two new projects for the search. The Breakthrough Listen project aims to use the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and the Parkes Observatory in Australia to listen for alien radio signals. The Lick Telescope in California will be on the lookout for light signals from lasers as part of that project. (Lasers are directed light beams that can travel relatively far, so there’s a chance aliens might use them to get in touch.)

The second project is called Breakthrough Message and is an international competition to draft a digital message to send to the stars. (The message won’t necessarily be sent, but researchers say they hope the entries will spur thought and debate about how to communicate with aliens.)

Reaching out

Most people believe intelligent alien life lurks in the cosmos. [See full infographic]
Credit: by Karl Tate, Infographics Artist

Between those who say they believe in alien intelligence and those who say they aren’t sure whether it exists, the alien nonbelievers are in the minority, according to the new YouGov survey. Only 12 percent of Germans, 22 percent of Americans and 20 percent of people from the United Kingdom said they do not believe intelligent aliens exist.

The survey also asked E.T. believers why they thought aliens had not yet made contact. More than half (58 percent) said intelligent aliens are too far away to contact Earth. Fifty-seven percent agreed with the notion that human technology isn’t advanced enough for people to reach out to E.T.  

Of the E.T. believers, 24 percent said that extraterrestrial life knows about Earthlings but chooses not to reach out. Seventeen percent said alien intelligence has already reached out, but governments have covered it up.

Men are more likely to believe in intelligent aliens than are women, and also more likely to say humanity should reach out. A majority of men (54 percent) said humans should try to contact aliens, while only 40 percent of women agreed.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

The supermassive black hole at the heart of a recently discovered galaxy is much larger than it should be, and astronomers don’t know why.

The galaxy, known as SAGE0536AGN, lies about 2 billion light-years from Earth and contains roughly 25 billion times the mass of the sun. Galaxies of this size typically harbor central black holes with the equivalent of 12 million solar masses or so, but SAGE0536AGN’s is about 30 times that heavy, weighing in at 350 million solar masses, a new study reports.

“Galaxies have a vast mass, and so do the black holes in their cores,” lead author Jacco van Loon, an astrophysicist at Keele University in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. “This one, though, is really too big for its boots — it simply shouldn’t be possible for it to be so large.”

Supermassive black holes and their host galaxies generally grow in concert, but the SAGE0536AGN system isn’t playing by that rule. The central black hole may have grown much faster than the galaxy, or perhaps the galaxy stopped growing early on for some reason while the black hole kept gobbling up material, researchers said.

“Time will tell whether SAGE0536AGN really is an oddball, or simply the first in a new class of galaxies,” officials with the Royal Astronomical Society said in the same statement.

Black Hole Quiz: How Well Do You Know Nature’s Weir…

Black holes are so bizarre, they sound unreal. Yet astronomers have found good evidence they exist. Test your knowledge of these wacky wonders.

0 of 9 questions complete

Black Hole Quiz: How Well Do You Know Nature’s Weir…

Black holes are so bizarre, they sound unreal. Yet astronomers have found good evidence they exist. Test your knowledge of these wacky wonders.

0 of questions complete

SAGE0536AGN was discovered in 2011 by researchers analyzing data gathered by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Researchers think the galaxy is at least 9 billion years old.

Van Loon and co-author Anne Sansom, of the University of Central Lancashire in the United Kingdom, studied SAGE0536AGN using the Southern African Large Telescope. The duo measured how fast gas is swirling around the supermassive black hole by noting how hydrogen emissions were shifted by the Doppler effect — the same phenomenon that explains why an ambulance siren sounds relatively high-pitched when it’s approaching an observer, and lower-pitched when it’s driving away.

The speed of the gas is determined by the black hole’s mass, so the researchers were then able to calculate that SAGE0536AGN’s behemoth is as heavy as 350 million suns.

The new study was published online this month in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

How Mars and the blue star Regulus will look at 5 a.m. on Sept. 25, 2015.
CREDIT: Starry Night Software

Mars will team up with the blue-tinged star Regulus in a dazzling display early Friday morning.

The two celestial objects form a striking “double star” about one-quarter of the way up in the eastern sky one hour before sunrise through the end of September.

From Sept. 23 to 27, planet and star are within just 2.5 degrees of each other. (Reminder: Your fist held at arm’s length measures about 10 degrees across.) Conjunction and appulse (least separation) come on Friday morning (Sept. 25), with Mars appearing within just 0.8 degrees of Regulus. [Best Night Sky Events of September 2015 (Stargazing Maps)]

On that morning, Mars will appear just to the left of the star; on the following evening, the pair won’t be quite as close, as Mars will have shifted to a position 1 degree to the lower left of Regulus. Mars will shine at magnitude +1.8, so it will look somewhat fainter than Regulus, which will appear at magnitude +1.3. (Astronomers use a scale in which lower numbers denote higher brightnesses.)

With the naked eye or (especially) binoculars, you can see the greatly contrasting colors of golden-orange Mars and slightly blue-tinged Regulus. In a small telescope, the planet looks like little more than a star itself. With a miniscule apparent diameter of 3.8 arc seconds, Mars appears hardly bigger than the far more distant Uranus. 

Best of all, the two brightest planets will flank Mars and Regulus. Situated well to their upper right is dazzling Venus, while dangling well to their lower left gleams brilliant Jupiter.

Mars on the move

Mars is continuing to approach Earth, slowly but surely.

The Red Planet was behind the sun this summer, on the opposite side of the solar system from Earth. On June 14, for example, Mars was hidden from view and about 240 million miles (386 million kilometers) away. The planet remained pretty much at that distance through mid-July, then it began to move ever so slowly toward Earth while gradually freeing itself from the glare of the sun.

Mars rose just over an hour before the sun at the start of August, but was rising 2 hours before dawn by the end of that month. The Red Planet appeared to gradually shift eastward against the zodiacal constellations throughout August, past the “twin stars” Pollux and Castor in the constellation Gemini, and then through the famous Beehive Star Cluster of Cancer, the Crab.

On Sept. 5, Mars crossed over into the constellation Leo, the Lion. Because it’s still very far from Earth, Mars remains unusually dim, shining at magnitude +1.8; it’s currently placed in the ranking of a second-magnitude object and continues to remain at that level through this week.

And yet, despite Mars’ underperforming brightness, it will be interesting to watch the planet move through Leo’s familiar sickle-and-triangle star pattern. Mars’ movement is fast enough to be noticeable from day to day.

More Mars pairings coming

On the morning of Oct. 9, Mars will form a triangle with Jupiter and a lovely waning crescent moon. Then, on Oct. 17, less than 0.5 degrees will separate Mars and Jupiter.

Mars will continue to slide east through Leo. The triangle marking Leo’s hindquarters provides another easy comparison point for judging the planet’s movement against background stars. The second-magnitude star Denebola marks Leo’s tail. Mars will pass well south of Denebola on Nov. 6. Then, just after autumn transitions into winter, on Dec. 23, the planet will pass 3.5 degrees north of the first-magnitude star Spica of Virgo.

By next spring, Mars will approach Earth more closely than it has in more than a decade. On May 30, the Red Planet will be 46.77 million miles (75.26 million km) away and will be in the constellation of Libra, the Scales, shining at magnitude -2.0, some 32 times brighter than it appears now.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York’s Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmer’s Almanac and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, N.Y. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

The SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array (ATA) is hunting for radio signals from hypothetical intelligent alien life in our galaxy. Credit: SETI Institute

Edward Snowden, the former contractor who leaked National Security Agency secrets publicly in 2013, is now getting attention for an odd subject: aliens.

In a podcast interview with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, Snowden suggested that alien communications might be encrypted so well that humans trying to eavesdrop on extraterrestrials would have no idea they were hearing anything but noise. There’s only a small window in the development of communication in which unencrypted messages are the norm, Snowden said.

“So if you have an alien civilization trying to listen for other civilizations, or our civilization trying to listen for aliens, there’s only one small period in the development of their society where all of their communications will be sent via the most primitive and most unprotected means,” he said.

But those holding out hope for contact from extraterrestrials can breathe easy: Humanity’s current search for alien intelligence doesn’t rely on an intelligible message, say scientists with the SETI Institute, which is dedicated to the search for life in the universe. The real hunt, they say, is for the medium. 

“We’re not looking for the message,” said Seth Shostak, director of the SETI Institute’s Center for SETI Research. “We’re looking for the signal that tells us that somebody has a transmitter.” [13 Ways to Hunt for Intelligent Aliens]

Signal received

To be fair, Snowden was speaking off-the-cuff about encryption in general; it’s not likely he expected to be chatting about aliens or has done an in-depth study of how the search for extraterrestrial intelligence has evolved.

But data encryption is beside the point, Shostak said. So far, most of the hunt for alien signals has used radio waves, based on the theory that radio is a relatively easy and cheap way to send signals a long way through space.

The SETI Institute uses powerful radio telescopes on Earth to search for narrow-band signals, or signals focused at one spot on the radio dial, Shostak said. Lots of natural bodies make radio noise, he said, but the only thing that makes a narrow-band signal, as far as scientists know, is a transmitter.

Thus, a focused band of signal is a waving flag, signaling, “Hey, there’s somebody out there who can build a radio transmitter,” Shostak said. The message itself might be indistinguishable from noise if it were well encrypted, but it would still, obviously, be a message.

Eavesdropping on aliens

In his comments, Snowden went on to suggest that if humans overheard aliens communicating amongst themselves — if humans were to pick up the alien version of a telephone call or television broadcast — it might be so well encrypted that it would be invisible among the radio chatter of the natural universe.

But that’s not necessarily the case, Shostak said, because even general broadcast signals would have narrow-band components that humans might notice.

At the moment, the question is largely moot, said Doug Vakoch, a researcher at the SETI Institute in charge of interstellar message composition. (Yes, this means he’s in charge of thinking about how to talk to aliens.) The technology is simply not there to overhear broadcasts not directed at earthlings, Vakoch told Live Science. [Incredible Technology: How to Search for Alien Civilizations]

“Even our radio and television signals that are streaming off into space would be undetectable by us if they were out at the nearest star system beyond Earth,” Vakoch said.

In another few hundred years, technology might develop far enough so that eavesdropping over mind-bendingly long distances might be possible, Vakoch said. In other words, Snowden’s conjecture about encryption could pose problems for people searching for alien life hundreds or thousands of years from now.

But encryption isn’t the biggest challenge for eavesdropping earthlings.

“If another civilization wants to conceal its identity, it doesn’t even have to worry about encryption,” Vakoch said. “If you look at telecommunications as it is developing here on Earth, we have been noisy in the past. We had a lot of TV and radio going out into space. Now, as we shift to communication by fiber-optic or by telecommunication satellite, there is less of this leakage going off into space.”

Thus, if an advanced civilization is looking for us, it does indeed have a short window to do so — regardless of encryption. That means any alien civilization that overhears earthlings or reaches out to us is likely to have been listening and transmitting for thousands, or even millions, of years, Vakoch said. Otherwise, it’s simply too likely that earthlings and aliens will miss each other in the vastness of space and time. For now, the best hope remains searching for direct messages sent deliberately by clever extraterrestrials, Vakoch said. [10 Alien Encounters, Debunked]

Conversing with E.T.

If aliens were sending a direct message, they’d probably put a bit of thought into how it might be read. Humanity certainly has.

In 1974, scientists beamed a radio message to space from the Arecibo Observatory radio telescope in Puerto Rico. This “Arecibo message” was a 3-minute data broadcast of 1,679 bits that can be reconstructed into an illustration of 73 lines made up of 23 characters each that looks like something out of an Atari game. In fact, it’s a representation of the numbers 1 through 10; the atomic numbers of several elements important to life on Earth; information about DNA; a representation of the human form; a graphic of the solar system; and a graphic of the transmitting telescope.

Scientists composed the message with care. There are only two numbers that can be multiplied to give you 1,679, Vakoch said, and both are prime numbers (73 and 23), which should give a smart E.T. a hint at the message’s dimensions. (If they’ve figured out radio waves, they probably know something about math, Vakoch said.) Aliens might still be flummoxed by the message’s content, but they’d be able to see symmetrical forms in the correctly reconstructed image, letting them know they were correct in putting it together.

“We want to do anti-cryptography,” Vakoch said. “We want to create a message that’s as easy as possible to decode.”

The ideal message to space would also be anti-efficient. Instead of transmitting data once in a small form, Vakoch said, you’d want to make it redundant and draw the conversation out so that your listener would have some way to check his or her (or its) work. Redundancy would also help correct for any errors that might occur during transmission over long distances. 

“The really nice thing about that exchange between Neil deGrasse Tyson and Edward Snowden is it raises the whole issue about how and why we might want to encode information,” Vakoch said.

Other ways to find life

Radio isn’t the only way to find aliens, though it remains the cheapest and most promising at the moment. There are SETI experiments searching for flashing lights, whether visible spectrum or longer-traveling infrared, Shostak said.

“The thing about that is, they have to be deliberately aiming your way with the light, because otherwise, it’s very expensive,” he said. “And I assume that Klingons worry about cost.”

Light also fades over shorter distances than radio waves obscured by interplanetary dust.

Another possibility, though still out of reach of Earth technology, is scanning exoplanet atmospheres for signs of life. It’s tricky, Shostak said, because many unnatural emissions that would signal life cause problems. Humans, for example, only dumped chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) into the atmosphere for a few decades before realizing the damage to the ozone and reducing CFC emissions. Fossil-fuel use sends high levels of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but high levels of carbon dioxide aren’t fingerprints of intelligent life, Shostak said — you can find tons of carbon dioxide on Venus.

One telling bit of galactic trash might be heat, Shostak said. It’s possible that an advanced civilization running a huge amount of machinery would give off more infrared (heat) signals than normal. However, right now, humanity can only detect anomalous infrared in huge amounts, comparable to the entire star shine of a galaxy, Shostak said.

Recent exoplanet discoveries have heightened hopes that intelligent life is out there, though. Research published in 2013 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences estimated that some 22 percent of stars have Earth-size planets in their habitable zones.

“It’s not one in a million,” Shostak said.

The discoveries don’t tell you where to point the antennas, he said, but they suggest it might not matter where you point them. Life could be anywhere. And there’s always the chance humanity will stumble across it by accident.

“It’s not impossible that the first discovery of intelligence will be something you didn’t expect to find,” Shostak said.

Editor’s Note: This article was updated to change the word “encode” to the correct term “decode.”

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 has returned incredible imagery of the supernova remnant locoed 2100 light-years away in the Cygnus constellation. A comparison of imagery from 1997 shows that the gas filaments have moved.

An image of the lunar eclipse of July 16, 2000. Credit: Fred Espenak/NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

If you’re planning to spend some time outside observing the lunar eclipse this Sunday (Sept. 27), you may want to have a few snacks on hand. Whether you’re having a party or going solo, Space.com is here to make sure you feast in lunar style!

Mooncakes for the Mid-Autumn Festival

The day of the lunar eclipse is also the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, a yearly celebration of the fall harvest. It’s also known as the moon festival, and usually includes a special treat called mooncakes. These small pastries are typically made from a a simple flour-based dough that is stuffed with red bean paste or lotus paste, although there are many variations. They’re usually round, representing the roundness of the full moon, but they can be formed into other shapes as well. [Supermoon Lunar Eclipse: Complete Blood Moon Coverage]

A few old favorites

If you want the food prep for your lunar eclipse party limited to a stop at the grocery store, here are a few options. 

MoonPies are always a hit, especially with kids, and should be easy to find at your grocery store. Although not lunar, Little Debbie’s Star Crunch snacks, plus Milky Way and Mars candy bars, can help hold up the astronomy theme. To drink, you can also bring out what is allegedly an astronaut favorite, Tang, though adults may find it a bit too sweet.

Why not serve a cheese platter, since everyone knows the moon is made of cheese … isn’t it?  That way, guests can have something less sugary to munch on. Try pairing the cheese with circular-cut meats and round “full moon” crackers.

One of the lunar tales abundant from Asia to South America is that the imprint of a rabbit is present on the surface of the moon; capitalize on this by offering your guests some rabbit food (a veggie platter), as well. Maybe the lunar bunny will join your party!

A little more work

If you’re ready to spend a little time in the kitchen, here are a few ideas.

For a fun, lunar-themed appetizer, try pizza moons. These delicious crescent rolls are stuffed with pepperoni and cheese, and can be dipped in pizza sauce. These creations form the familiar “C” shape of the crescent moon (even though you’ll be watching a full moon this Sunday).

Macaroni and cheese can be another great favorite, once again playing on the tale that the moon is made of cheese. In a pinch, you can use a boxed classic, but you can also make your own.

If you can’t find MoonPies, or prefer to bake your own, consider their precursor, whoopie pies. You’ll make the cookies separate from the marshmallow crème filling, but the process is relatively simple and fun.

Sugar cookies make another round treat, and you can decorate them to shine like the full moon, or leave them icing-free so that just their shape is suggestive of the planetoid.

An easy cake to make is the Craters of the Moon Cake, with volcanoes and meteorites. It takes only a few minutes to put together, plus a half an hour to bake.

If you’re looking for a warm drink, consider Chandra Chai Moon Tea.

For the serious chef

If you don’t mind spending some time in the kitchen, there are plenty of treats you can whip up. Half-moon recipes seem to be quite common; we’ve picked out a few options for you.

Half-moon cheese pies make an excellent appetizer. These folded pastries can include a variety of fillings, so feel free to try your own beyond those included in the recipe. Another filling appetizer is chicken half moons. Stuffed with chicken and cheese, these can be a great option for those who want less-sugary treats. For a lunar desert, consider apple half moons. You can start with whole apples, or simplify the recipe by using chunky applesauce.

If you really want to throw a stylish party, you may be interested in Martha Stewart’s layered stars-and-moon cake.

And for the adults in your party, you might also consider some moon-themed cocktails.

Whatever you snack on, we hope you enjoy the amazing lunar display! 

Thanks to Weekend Notes and The Stir for inspiration!

Follow Nola Taylor Redd on Twitter @NolaTRedd or Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

In celebration of the total lunar eclipse taking place this weekend, we’ve cooked up some moon-inspired cocktails that are sure to spice up your lunar viewing party.

This Sunday night (Sept. 27), skywatchers are in for a stunning lunar event: The moon will pass into the shadow of the Earth, creating a lunar eclipse and giving the planetoid a blood-red tint, which is why it is sometimes called a Blood Moon. In addition, this also happens to be a supermoon and a Harvest Moon.

In honor of this exciting convergence of events, we asked Athena Hom, a mixologist and co-owner of the Rumpus Room bar on the Lower East Side of New York City, to whip up some very moony cocktails. And of course, we wouldn’t be doing our due diligence as reporters if we didn’t test the drinks ourselves. [Supermoon Lunar Eclipse: When and How to See It]

On Tuesday (Sept. 22), we headed down to the Rumpus Room to taste-test the lunar concoctions that Hom had cooked up. It was 1 p.m. and I hadn’t eaten anything in about 3 hours, which means I’m starting to think about some of these moon-themed snacks.

(We realized after the fact that none of these cocktails contain moonshine. This was a huge oversight. You could substitute moonshine for some of the other liquors in the recipes below. Or you could just drink moonshine by itself, which we’re pretty sure is how it’s traditionally served.)

The first cocktail was inspired by the Blood Moon. During a lunar eclipse, light from the sun passes through Earth’s atmosphere before it hits the surface of the moon. The atmosphere acts as a color filter and turns the sunlight red, so the moon also appears to turn a shade of crimson.

The cocktail, dubbed a “Bloody Moony,” is a very fancy (and very delicious) Bloody Mary. The skewered white onions add a moonlike element.

Bloody Moony

In a shaker with ice, add:

• 1.5 ounces vodka
• 1 teaspoon of horseradish
• 3-4 splashes of Worcestershire sauce 
• 1 teaspoon celery salt
• 1 teapoon garlic salt
• 1 teapoon black pepper
• 2-3 splashes of Tabasco sauce 

Shake to mix. Pour into a pint glass (including the ice, or strain over fresh ice). Top with tomato juice. Garnish with a whole lime wedge and three skewered cocktail onions. [Video: How to Pour a Bloody Moony]

I was worried that all the spices in this drink would be overwhelming, but it was actually incredibly smooth (you could easily halve the amount of spices if you prefer a milder drink). The thickness of the tomato juice, plus all of the spice and the strong aroma make this creation more of a snack than a cocktail — which, when you think about it, is very efficient. I just realized how hungry I am, so I’ll go ahead and take a few more sips.

Next up is the Harvest Moon.

The “Harvest Moon” cocktail combines sweet apple liquor, cinnamon whiskey and fresh apple cider to capture the essence of fall.
Credit: Jeremy Lips/Space.com

Harvest Moon

Rim a very short tumbler or Old-Fashioned glass with finely crushed graham crackers. (To rim a glass, first put some water or simple syrup on a small plate, then dip the rim into the liquid so it is wet. Put the graham crackers on a separate plate and dip the wet rim. The crackers should stick.)

In a shaker with ice, add:

• 0.5 ounce applejack liqueur
• 0.5 ounce Fireball (Cinnamon-flavored whiskey)

Shake. Pour into the glass rimmed with the graham crackers. Top with apple cider (just a few ounces). Garnish with cinnamon stick. [Video: How to Pour a Harvest Moon]

A Harvest Moon refers to the full moon that takes place closest to the autumnal equinox — which took place yesterday (Sept. 23). This drink is extremely fitting (it even has the golden-yellow color, just like a real Harvest Moon). The taste of the cider and the applejack comes in first, and together with the graham crackers it’s a wonderfully sweet start. The drink finishes with the taste of whiskey, and leaves behind a hint of cinnamon. If you wanted to tone down the sweetness you could leave out the applejack. It’s a nice, small cocktail so it’s easy to finish the whole thing.

Next up, the Supermoon.

The “Supermoon” cocktail puts a twist on the classic margarita by substituting the traditional citrus mixer with cream of coconut.
Credit: Jeremy Lips/Space.com

Supermoon

In a shaker with ice, add:

• 1 ounce tequila
• 0.5 ounce triple sec
• 3 tablespoons of cream of coconut (such as Coco Lopez)
• Splash of fresh lime juice

Shake to mix. Strain into a tumbler with a rim as big as the supermoon (or just a regular short tumbler, Old-Fashioned glass or martini glass). Garnish with fresh coconut flakes.[Video: How to Pour a Supermoon]

This drink is big and white, just like the supermoon, which refers to a full moon that takes place when the moon is closest to the Earth in its orbit (also known as perigee). A supermoon appears slightly larger in the sky than a regular full moon.

For the cocktail, if you shake the ingredients enough, you’ll get some foam on the top, and the bubbles kind of resemble craters on the lunar surface. Look at those adorable little moon craters! This might be my favorite of all the moony cocktails because I love coconut, and this is basically coconut meat in liquid form. I’m going give the rest of this to our video crew because otherwise I think I’ll drink it all in the next two minutes. Did I mention what a great crew we have? Great crew! Love these guys!

The final cocktail is the Eclipse Night, a visually stunning concoction that attempts to replicate a lunar eclipse set against the glittering backdrop of the cosmos. It involves a very special liqueur called Viniq. It’s purple and sparkly and when you move it or shake it, the way it shimmers is mesmerizing. And I’m not just saying that because I’ve been drinking. I mean, look at it. Did you look at it?

This gorgeous drink uses Viniq liquer to give it a cosmic color. The apple slice serves as the moon.
Credit: Jeremy Lips/Space.com

Eclipse Night

In shaker with ice, add:

• 1 ounce Viniq
• 0.5 ounce crème de cassis
• 0.5 ounce vodka

Shake. Strain into short tumbler or Old-Fashioned glass. Take an apple and cut into .25 inch slices (so they look sort of like a full moon). Smear the surface of the apple slice with bitters, to give it a burnt red color. Gently set the apple slice on top of the liquid. [Video: How to Pour an Eclipse Night]

Ladies and gentlemen, this is how you make a lunar eclipse in a glass. The apple slice has the burnt red color of the moon during an eclipse, and the deep, shimmery liquid looks like you’re staring into the depths of the cosmos. This gorgeous mixture tastes like berries. Just berry juice, there’s almost no alcoholic taste to this one. Hey, make one of these for the crew. Great crew! Why don’t we do more cocktail stories? Guys, look, I took a bite out of the moon! Hey, can I have another one of those coconut Supermoons? You guys, be sure you visit the Rumpus Room, they’ll make you a moon cocktail! Lemme see that bottle of sparkly alcohol again.

Follow Calla Cofield @callacofield. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.