Near-total lunar eclipse as moon passes through Earth's shadow

Residents of Lisbon looked to the skies in the early hours of Friday morning as Portugal experienced a partial lunar eclipse.

Beginning in the America’s, up to 96 percent of the moon was masked from Thursday night into Friday morning. A lunar eclipse occurs when Earth’s shadow passes across the moon, obscuring part of its surface.

The event came two weeks after a total solar eclipse crossed Greenland, Iceland and Spain.

Eclipses always travel in pairs as the sun, moon and Earth align so precisely that one obscures the other.

In a cosmic coincidence, the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun, which is 400 times farther away, making them appear the same size.

The lunar eclipse was visible across parts of North and South America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East.