Many sky-gazers around the world will get the chance to see a dazzling celestial display this weekend — a total lunar eclipse that could cause the moon to take on a deep reddish hue.

The lunar eclipse will be visible Sunday for those in Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia, according to NASA. As the sun, moon and Earth line up in their orbits, the moon will be cast into a crescent-shaped shadow before being fully blocked from the sun by Earth. At that point, some light from the sun will make it around the edges of Earth. Blue light will be scattered by air molecules while the remaining wavelengths will reflect off the moon making it appear to glow red — what is known as a blood moon.

The event will start at 11:28 a.m. ET and end at 4:55 p.m. ET (though the eclipse will not be visible to those in the Eastern time zone). Totality — when the moon is completely covered by Earth’s shadow — will start at 1:30 p.m. ET and last for about an hour and 23 minutes, according to EarthSky.

“The beauty of a lunar eclipse is that it’s gradual. For folks that have seen solar eclipses, they happen fairly rapidly. The lunar eclipse is a far more relaxed environment,” said Noah Petro, chief of NASA’s Planetary Geology, Geophysics and Geochemistry Lab at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “You don’t have to be in a specific spot (to see it), but you have to be in the right hemisphere.”

For those in North and South America who will not be able to view the eclipse, there will still be opportunities to observe a bright full moon this weekend, otherwise known as the corn moon.

Here’s what experts recommend for best viewing of the full moon and the total lunar eclipse.

September’s full moon — nicknamed the corn moon as it aligns with the season for harvesting corn, according to the The Old Farmer’s Almanac — will peak around the same time as the lunar eclipse. But full moons appear round to the naked eye one day before and after their peak, so sky-gazers can observe the full moon all weekend and into Monday, Petro said.

For best viewing of the full moon and the total lunar eclipse, Petro recommends going outside and finding a spot away from bright lights, as they could hinder visibility of the natural satellite as it goes through all stages of the eclipse.

“A lunar eclipse is a truly incredible sight, and something you can see without any special equipment — you do not need a telescope or even the special eclipse glasses that you need for a solar eclipse,” Sara Russell, research scientist and head of the Planetary Materials Group at London’s Natural History Museum, said in an email. But having binoculars or a telescope available could add to the viewing experience, Russell noted.

The moon turns red once it is completely blocked by Earth’s shadow, illuminated by red-orange light from the sunsets and sunrises on the Earth, Petro said.

Occasionally, directly before and following totality, the moon can appear to have a blue and purple band of light upon it. This phenomenon is caused by sunlight passing through the Earth’s ozone layer in the upper atmosphere, Russell said.

While full moons occur every 29 days, lunar eclipses typically only happen about twice a year when the sun, moon and Earth align. For those who may be feeling left out, the next total lunar eclipse is set to take place on March 3 and will be visible in parts of North and South America, Petro said.

“I’m always happy to see the full Moon, whether there is an eclipse or not,” Russell said. “The Moon formed in the very earliest times of the Earth’s history, and the Earth and Moon have been through a lot together. You can see the evidence of that with the naked eye, looking up to see all the craters on the Moon that have been formed over 4.5 billion years of history.”

The next three full moons will be supermoons — full moons that occur when the moon is closest to Earth in its orbit, making it appear larger and brighter than regular full moons.

Here’s the list of full moons remaining in 2025, according to the Farmers’ Almanac:

Two weeks after the total lunar eclipse, on September 21, a partial solar eclipse will be visible in parts of Australia, the Atlantic, the Pacific and Antarctica. This occurs when the moon moves between the sun and Earth, blocking part of the sun’s light from view.

There are also opportunities to observe other solar system activity, including several meteor showers that will grace the night sky in the following months.

Here are the peak dates of meteor showers anticipated in 2025, according to the American Meteor Society and EarthSky.

Taylor Nicioli is a freelance journalist based in New York.

Chances are very good that if someone wins Saturday’s promised Powerball prize of $1.8 billion, they will cash in their ticket. But it’s not certain.

Not every jackpot-winning ticket sold over the years has been cashed in. And if you totaled up all the missing smaller “winners” who could claim anywhere from a few dollars to millions of dollars, their total-lost winnings likely stretch to the 10-figure range annually.

Prizes worth about 1% of yearly lottery revenue go unclaimed, said Victor Matheson, an economics professor at the College of the Holy Cross and an expert on gambling and lotteries, citing an annual report from the New York Lottery Commission.

“The amount of unclaimed prizes are similar nationwide,” said Matheson. And since so many lotto tickets are sold each year, that 1% estimate adds up to more than $1 billion.

One of the unclaimed prizes last year was a winning lottery ticket sold on July 3, 2024, at a Walmart Supercenter in Huber Heights, Ohio. That unclaimed ticket would have paid the holder $138 million spread over 20 years, or $65.8 million as a lump sum.

Eight Mega Millions or Powerball jackpots have gone unclaimed in the last 25 years, according to data on the two lottery sites. Those jackpots have a combined worth of $646 million, or $821 million when adjusted for inflation.

But those eight missed prizes are about 1.5% of all 520 jackpots won during that time. Most of the unclaimed potential winnings come from the smaller prizes, and far more of them don’t ever get cashed.

Many lottery players likely never check their tickets after they hear there was no jackpot winner, or that the winning ticket was sold far from where they bought their ticket, according to Matheson. Most probably are unaware they are leaving potential winnings on the table, or stashed their winning ticket in their pockets or junk drawers.

Some prizes are as low as $4 for those who match only the Powerball number in that game. But it can also be millions for those who get the five regular numbers but not the Powerball or Mega Ball number. Mega Millions pays $2 million for that prize, while Powerball pays either $1 million or $2 million, depending on whether the player paid extra for a “power play option.”

Beyond the million-dollar prizes, there are also modest prizes of between $4 and $500 in Powerball and between $10 and $800 in Mega Millions. And there are also prizes for up to six figures offered in the two games, ranging from $1,000 to as much as $500,000.

Different states have different time limits to turn in a winning ticket. Powerball’s site has a list of prizes of $50,000 or more that have not been claimed, as well as the time remaining for the winner to claim them. One of those listed prizes, a $50,000 winning ticket sold in March in Covington, Louisiana, just expired Friday without being claimed.

Most of the money wagered in lotteries isn’t in these jackpot drawing games, said Matheson. About 70% of the $110 billion in tickets sold are for instant scratch-off games. And while he has no firm data to back it up, he suspects relatively few of those winning tickets end up not being cashed.

“There’s just less time between when the tickets are sold and when the player knows if they won, less time for the ticket to be lost or forgotten,” Matheson said.

Donald Trump has warned that, if Venezuelan jets fly over US naval ships and “put us in a dangerous position, they’ll be shot down”.

The president’s warning comes after Venezuela flew military aircraft near a US vessel off South America for the second time in two days, US officials told the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

The reports follow a US strike against what Trump officials said was a “drug-carrying vessel from Venezuela” operated by a gang, killing 11 people.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has said that the US allegations about his country are not true, and that differences between the nations do not justify a “military conflict”.

“Venezuela has always been willing to talk, to engage in dialogue, but we demand respect,” he added.

When asked by reporters in the Oval Office on Friday what would happen if Venezuelan jets flew over US vessels again, Trump said Venezuela would be in “trouble”.

Trump told his general, standing beside him, that he could do anything he wanted if the situation escalated.

Since his return to office in January, Trump has steadily intensified his anti-drug-trafficking efforts in Latin America.

Maduro has accused the US of seeking “regime change through military threat”.

When asked about the comments, Trump said “we’re not talking about that”, but mentioned what he called a “very strange election” in Venezuela. Maduro was sworn in for his third term in January after a contested election.

Trump went on to say that “drugs are pouring” into the US from Venezuela and that members of Tren de Aragua – a gang proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the US – were living there.

The US military has moved to bolster its forces in the southern Caribbean, including through the deployment of additional naval vessels and thousands of marines and sailors to stem the flow of drugs.

The White House said on Friday that it is sending 10 F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico.

When asked about the build-up of military assets in the Caribbean, Trump said: “I think it’s just strong. We’re strong on drugs. We don’t want drugs killing our people.”

Trump is a long-time critic of Maduro, and doubled a reward for information leading to his arrest to $50m (£37.2m) in August, accusing Maduro of being “one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world”.

During Trump’s first term in office, the US government charged Maduro and other high-ranking Venezuelan officials with a range of offences, including narco-terrorism, corruption and drug trafficking.

Maduro has previously rejected the US allegations.