A personal view of Australian and International Politics : 2026

Thursday, 5 March 2026

Art offers us strength when the world feels unsteady.

Extract from ABC News

Analysis

By Virginia Trioli

Topic:Arts, Culture and Entertainment

1 hours ago

19th century gallery with parquetry flooring, dark grey walls, a black leather banquette, Impressionist paintings on walls. — Virginia Trioli writes that the lessons artists offer us — in connection, fulfilment and deep, human understanding — will land right now like survival strategies for us all. (Supplied: Art Gallery of South Australia)

In metallurgy, there's a concept called "yield strength".

Like bending a paper clip that you can never quite return to its original shape, yield strength is the maximum stress you can apply to a material before it distorts irrevocably.

Yield Strength is the title of this year's Biennial of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia, where the curator, Ellie Buttrose, has invited a broad collection of Australian artists to consider the resilience and strength of their materials, the work they make from it, and the world to which they deliver it. We spectators view this work at time when the "safe loads" of our societies, communities and capacities are under the crushing, life-changing stressors of the bin-fire world we inhabit.

We wrestle, like the artists, with what is affecting us, and what may also be deforming us for all time.

Geometric patterned banners in tangerine, royal blue and cyan hang between pillars outside the Art Gallery of South Australia — Yield Strength is the title of this year's Biennial of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia. (Supplied: AGSA/Saul Steed)

The importance of art in our lives right now

I am so taken by the concept Buttrose and the artists involved are testing, because there could not be a single better representation of the vital importance of powerful, resonating art in our lives right now, when leadership, meaning or even trustworthy direction is lacking in so many institutions, governments, corporations and world powers.

While those powers frighten us, fail us or in some cases destroy us, our artists keep trying to connect us to what is true, meaningful and enduring about the human spirit. And they do it a time when it surely makes more sense to just give it up.

Fascinatingly, world audiences are making it very clear they never want their artists to stop. In her international smash, Hamnet, the director Chloe Zhao, has a lit a new fire of understanding and connection beneath a Shakespeare classic that foregrounds love, loss and grief in a way that every filmgoer feels in their marrow.

Passionate arguments still rage world-wide about whether a beloved Victorian classic by Emily Bronte, has been misrepresented or reawakened in the new film version of Wuthering Heights. And a mind-blowing performance by singers Rosalia and Bjork paying homage to classic Berlin techno in their song Berghain has been the musical highlight of my year so far.

Two people in wedding blacks stand on a cliff — Emerald Fennell’s new film adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights has sparked debate. (Supplied: Universal/Warner Bros)

'Being an artist right now is so important'

All this work shows the connective strength — yes, the infinite yield strength — of creativity: songs and books and films and stories that endure through time and past the rise and collapse of world orders. We remember these creations. We recite them and sing them and share them with each other and turn to them in the biggest moments of our lives — birth, loss, joy — precisely because their meaning and emotional truth are persistent through time like high-tensile steel.

We build our real lives, our emotional lives, around these creations because our memories of them are strong, and they give us shelter.

For the creatives themselves, I'm sure that most artists, given world circumstances, are feeling a bit like this meme right now — uselessly whistling their music into the hot wind of global horror: what's the point of another recital when schools are being bombed?

But the English artist Tracey Emin had the best answer to that, as a massive retrospective of her work opened last week at the Tate Modern in London: "Art is one of the last good things we have left in the world that humans do… art is the antithesis of everything which is bad that's created by humans … being an artist right now is so important."

Emin is the artist whose installation "My Bed" tells the story of her emotional collapse at the end of a relationship, and there would not be a woman alive who looks at the dishevelled bed and its detritus and does not understand exactly how those four, desperate and drunk days in it felt. Emin's representation of depression is as banal as it is ecstatic because it feels like everyone's.

That's what the six distinctive artists featured in the new series of Creative Types which premieres on ABCTV tonight hope to do: to connect, to make you feel and to make you feel human when the rest of the world seems controlled by bloodless ideologues and bots.

Creative Types is back on screen and the first episode delves into Jimmy Barnes' story. (ABC News)

From Andy Griffiths to Andrea Lam

Peerless actor Hugo Weaving finds the humanity in even the most difficult of men; Andrea Lam proselytises the emotional impact of the piano to any person — young or old — that she can; Andy Griffiths is on a lifelong mission make children love reading; Jimmy Barnes turns trauma into a national soundtrack; dancer David Hallberg wants us all to feel and understand our body's relationship to dance; and Nazeem Hussain fearlessly makes comedy about the tragedy of Gaza.

All of that is, I think, some of the most important work anyone can do.

In their book, Your Brain on Art, Johns Hopkins scientific researchers, Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross, suggested that one or more art experiences a month can extend your life by 10 years — promoting sensory engagement, neuroplasticity and increased cognitive skills — and is as important as sleep, movement and nutrition.

You can dive into their research yourself to see if it persuades you — but I'm not surprised.

Because the opposite of yield strength is ductility: a material's ability to undergo serious, permanent stretching without breaking.

Put another way, that's resilience.

And as our countries, our ecosystems, our communities are stretched to breaking point, I know that the lessons of our Australian creatives in true resilience — in connection, fulfilment and deep, human understanding — will land right now rather like survival strategies for us all.

Virginia Trioli is presenter of Creative Types and a former co-host of ABC News Breakfast and Mornings on ABC Radio Melbourne. The episode with Jimmy Barnes airs at 8.30pm Thursday 5 March on ABCTV, and you can stream all episodes and past series of the show now on ABC iView.

Wednesday, 4 March 2026

By striking Gulf states Iran is hitting one of Donald Trump's vulnerabilities.

Extract from ABC News

Analysis

By global affairs editor Laura Tingle in Dubai

Topic:War

1 hours ago

Donald Trump wearing a red "USA" hat, looking solemn as he walks at night. — Donald Trump's decision to strike Iran might, in hindsight, be seen as a "huge miscalculation", according to one analyst. (Reuters: Nathan Howard)

Donald Trump called Iran the "world's number one sponsor of terror" when announcing the US strikes on the country on Saturday.

Whatever the title meant to the US president — in terms of his fluctuating war aims in Iran — Iran's support for terrorism over the past four decades can explain much about how it is now conducting its war in response to the US and Israeli attacks.

It is particularly useful in explaining its aggressive and escalating attacks on neighbouring states that had been desperately trying to stop the conflict, and now find themselves dragged into it.

Terrorism and counter-insurgency are generally the resort of the side that does not have access to the power and weapons of their opponents — the Irish, the Viet Cong, the Palestinians and, in the early days leading up to the foundation of the state of Israel, the Zionists determined to force the British out of Palestine, to name a few.

It involves finding ways to neutralise the military superiority of your foes with unconventional tactics and limited weapons. And it shows scant regard for making innocent bystanders its victims in the name of the cause.

The lightning speed with which Israeli and US forces killed Iran's supreme leader and many of the country's military and political chiefs cast the first days of the war as being firmly controlled by the military might of the US and Israel, and their high-tech intelligence.

But the war in the Middle East has rapidly descended into a much more complex and messy affair where that superiority looks nowhere near as certain.

That's largely because of Iran's counter tactics, and particularly its attacks on neighbouring countries.

To many people, this made little sense.

A large blast rocks the US consulate in Dubai after a suspected Iranian drone strike.

The Gulf states themselves — countries like Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia — were shocked that Iran was attacking their civilian targets and infrastructure, not just US military assets in the region.

This was seen as an ultimately self-defeating miscalculation — why would you want to isolate yourself even further from the rest of the world? Including from countries that have desperately tried to stop the US-Israeli action?

"Your war is not with your neighbours," the diplomatic adviser to the president of the United Arab Emirates, Anwar Gargash, said on Sunday.

"Return to reason, to your surroundings, and deal with your neighbours rationally and responsibly before the circle of isolation and escalation widens."

Iran betting Trump won't want a long war: analyst

Iran's strategy has always been to maximise its perceived power to influence events through proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.

By attacking neighbouring states, Iran can potentially achieve two strategic ambitions.

The first is that it can maximise the economic and political pain on its neighbours in a conflict in which they are not combatants, and through them inflict pain on the global economy.

The value of that is that it increases the economic and political pain on Trump in continuing his involvement in this war.

It also increases the pressure on all those neighbouring countries to weigh up the costs or benefits of joining the fight.

The second ambition, however, is that Iran has been forcing the Gulf states, as well as Israel, to use up their expensive defensive, high-tech weapons systems fighting often relatively cheap drones, possibly leaving them vulnerable down the track to a relentless bombardment by Iran if they run out of the expensive gear.

It's a similar dilemma that has been facing European countries in recent months: being forced to use weapons like Patriot missiles — originally designed to defend against major missile attacks, or even to scramble multi-million dollar fighter jets — to fend off attacks from suspected Russian drones invading Western European airspace.

The tactic effectively uses the might of superior weaponry against perceived opponents to run down their defences.

Iran is betting that Trump's love of the idea of a quick intervention, seen in the earlier attack on Iran in June last year, and then in Venezuela, reflects an intolerance for staying in the fight for any length of time.

Particularly if he is facing pressure at home from an intolerant public and a price shock coming from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on Gulf gas production.

Strikes on Iran throw spanner in the works for inflation as oil and gas prices surge. (Ian Verrender)

Pre-eminent Iranian-American political scientist and Iran expert Vali Nasr told the Foreign Policy podcast on Monday that "low-cost drones can neutralise multimillion-dollar military assets".

"The main actors here — Iran, Israel, the United States — each of them has a different pain tolerance of how much they're able to sustain in terms of civilian losses, infrastructural damage, military damage, before they might radically change any of their calculations," he said.

In Iran's case, he said, "I think they have made a decision that the only way that the Islamic Republic, the revolution, and people in the country, in their eyes, will survive, is actually to persevere in this fight."

Iran has a fairly high pain threshold, he argues, particularly since repression means it is unlikely to face any political backlash, despite all the brave talk from Israel and the US about the Iranian people being given the opportunity to rise up and seize their country.

By comparison, "the United States is the Achilles heel of this, particularly a president who has been skittish about messy military entanglements. His base doesn't like this."

Gulf states 'stuck between a stone and a hard place'

Trump, Dr Nasr says, is the most likely to cringe at higher gas prices and at the substantial damage and bad optics they would generate in the United States.

"It makes sense for the Iranians to actually put their thumb on that vulnerability," he said.

"So it's really a test for President Trump as to 'did he completely miscalculate and discount how messy this can become?'

"I think we may end up seeing this as a huge miscalculation on the part of President Trump based on misreading, if you would, what the adversary's thinking is."

Certainly, the changing and conflicting rhetoric coming from Washington — from Trump himself, from his vice-president, and secretaries for war and state — about how long the conflict might go for and what exactly is its aim, suggests a clear lack of strategy about what would happen once the Ayatollah had been removed.

And the global shock waves — in oil prices, share markets and now speculation of rising interest rates — do not sit well with a Trumpian narrative about how things are all going to plan.

Dr Nasr says the Gulf countries face a dilemma.

"They host US bases that are there in order to attack Iran or protect against Iranian attacks," he said.

"But in reality, these bases are not able to provide protection to the Gulf countries.

"Iran has also made a decision that it's going to go after them — not because of lashing out or because of their support for the US, although that's the excuse — but to really go after their economies.

"Because impacting the Gulf countries' economies, and impacting energy supplies, impacts the global economy."

Donald Trump claims to have "knocked out just about everything" in Iran.

Dr Nasr says the problem the Gulf countries have is that unless the Iranian regime goes away, they can't actually change the military balance if they join the US fight.

"But if they join, and the regime survives, then they're going to be under a risk of an Iranian attack for decades," he adds.

And that will ruin their economies.

"If they don't join and the regime survives, the risk from Iran doesn't go away," Dr Nasr says.

"In other words, they're stuck between a stone and a hard place."

So despite their immense wealth — and even their past capacity to influence the globe through their control over oil prices — the Gulf States don't have much ability to influence events that could cause them immense harm.

Iran is hoping it can ride out Trump's preparedness to keep fighting and is maximising the pressure on him — and the global economy.

Trump and Israel are maximising the pressure on Iran by relentless bombardments in the hope that they can exhaust Iran's supply of weapons.

In the meantime, analysts speculate about whether the Gulf states could find themselves even more vulnerable if they run out of air defence systems, and also have to confront incoming missiles from Iran's proxies to their south — the Houthis.

Laura Tingle is the ABC's global affairs editor.

Growers branch out as demand grows for unique Australian native flowers.

Extract from ABC News

17 hours ago

A pair of hands part the petals on a spiky red flower growing up through a net of string. — Paul Dalley is successfully growing Sturt's desert pea in his Mid North Coast nursery. (ABC Rural: Lauren Bohane)

Nestled within the lush green bushland of the NSW Mid North Coast, Paul Dalley's flower farm is the last place a crop of Sturt's desert pea would be expected to thrive.

The floral emblem of South Australia normally grows in the outback, in arid conditions and sandy soil, but Mr Dalley is growing the flower in a greenhouse in Kempsey, where dozens of the native desert flowers are in full bloom.

Before Mr Dalley attempted to grow the flower last year, he had only seen it once, at Melbourne's botanic gardens.

"We just like growing things that are beautiful and different, and nobody else is growing," he said.

"They're beautiful, they're unique, a lot of people have seen pictures but have never seen them for real."

A man in a khaki button up shirt and blue cap stands inside a hot house with several different crops of small plants. — Paul Dalley loves the challenge of unique Australian blooms. (ABC Rural: Lauren Bohane)

Mr Dalley had about 40 plants in this year's crop, each sporting several flowers.

"We're doing much better than last year when most of the plants died off, and we only got about half a dozen flowers from 10 plants," he said.

But he said the challenge was what drew him to unusual flowers.

A fuzzy green seed pod hangs from a plant growing up through a web of string. — Paul Dalley plans to collect seeds from this year's crop of Sturt's desert pea. (ABC News: Lauren Bohane)

"Some of our crops are more on the mainstream side, and some are more far out, and some of them fail altogether," he said.

"It's a bit like gambling, but I don't gamble, so I buy exotic plants and seeds."

Mr Dalley said there had been massive interest in the flowers, but he planned to save most of this year's crop for seeds.

In South Australia, Sturt's desert pea is considered a protected flora, meaning flowers and plants cannot be collected from private or Crown land without permission.

Growing interest in natives

Further south, on the NSW Central Coast, East Coast Wildflowers' Jonathan Lidbetter has been growing Sturt's desert pea for eight years.

"It normally grows in areas of rainfall of about 250-500 millimetres a year, and we routinely get over 1,100mm, so we must be mad," Mr Lidbetter said.

"We've had various quality issues with seed and haven't made it a huge focus until the last couple of years.

"In the last couple of years, we've really tried hard to grow it better, to make it more commercial and to make the product desirable for the customer."

Jonathan Lidbetter has been growing Sturt's desert pea for eight years. (Supplied: Jonathan Lidbetter)

The blooms were sold at Sydney Flower Markets, where Mr Lidbetter said there was growing interest in native flowers.

"There's a move to more interesting, delicate flowers that have not really been available before," he said.

"COVID partly brought in a little bit of interest in locally-grown native flowers [with] short flower miles."

A red flower with several oblong petals growing up through a net of string. — Sturt's desert pea is notoriously difficult to grow outside of its native habitat. (ABC News: Lauren Bohane)

Mr Lidbetter said limited availability kept florists coming back to see what was in season.

"Seasonality keeps the florists interested in the market area because they're always coming in to see what's new, what's hitting the floor.

"A lot of their traditional flowers that they're used to, they're able to get 12 months a year, and they can just order them.

"A lot of the things that are now coming along in the native market line are very restricted supplies and often quite unusual."

Natives not always Australian-grown

The peak body for Australian flower growers and florists credited the rise in popularity of native flowers to Australians' growing desire to buy local.

"A lot of people in Australia relate them to being Australian-grown products, and there's a real trend towards wanting to buy and support Australian-grown flowers and Aussie businesses," Flower Industry Australia secretary Anna Jabour said.

A woman smiling holding a bouquet of pink roses and small white and yellow flowers. — Anna Jabour says native flowers are becoming more popular. (Supplied: Flower Industry Australia)

However, Ms Jabour warned Australian native did not always equate to Australian-grown when it came to flowers.

"I've seen kangaroo paw [and] some eucalyptus be imported, and that's why it's really important to ask where your flowers are from."

She said the flower industry had been advocating for mandated country-of-origin labelling for the past two decades.

"If there's no labelling telling people where flowers are from, a lot of the Australian public think that the flowers are just grown here," she said.

"Twenty-five years ago, that assumption would be correct; around 90 per cent or more of our flowers were grown here, but today it's only around 50 per cent."

Blood moon total lunar eclipse lights up Australian sky.

Extract from ABC News

By Kenith Png

Topic:The Moon

6 hours ago

A close shot of orangeish moon when lunar eclipse is happening in Perth. — The reddish-orange moon is captured from South Perth. (ABC News: Andrew O'Connor)

Stargazers came out in droves on Tuesday night to see the Moon tinged with a reddish-orange hue in their last chance to see a total lunar eclipse for almost three years.

Perth and southern Western Australia were among the best spots in the country to see the blood moon.

The eclipse was in totality for about an hour from 7pm in WA, transforming the Moon from its normal neutral colour to a warm reddish-orange.

A reddish-orange moon in the sky. — The "blood moon" can be seen with the naked eye. (ABC News: Kenith Png)

While taking place at the same time, the time difference meant it was a later local viewing time for Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Hobart, with totality — when the Moon is completely in the Earth's shadow — starting just after 10pm.

For Adelaide, totality started just after 9:30pm, for Brisbane it was around 9pm and in Darwin it was just after 8:30pm.

A woman sits on rocks looking at the blood moon. — The next blood moon is set to take place in about two years and 10 months. (ABC News: Christopher Lewis)

Since the Moon rose from the east, people viewing the event from Australia's east coast saw more of the partial eclipse in the lead-up to the Moon turning red during totality.

And in the west, it meant once the Moon was visible, it was in its full reddish-orange glory, seen with the naked eye or camera lens.

The blood moon is captured in East Fremantle, Perth. (Supplied: Alison K Thorburn Photography/Facebook)

According to astrophysicist Graham Jones, this event marked the end of a run of lunar eclipses, and a turning point towards more solar eclipses over the next few years.

"We see a pattern in eclipses where for a couple of years we get a very nice run of big lunar eclipses, and then the balance shifts and we have a few years of very nice solar eclipses," he said.

What is a lunar eclipse?

A lunar eclipse happens when the Earth passes directly between the Sun and Moon, and Matt Woods from the Perth Observatory said it could only occur during a full moon.

"The Moon goes into the shadow of the Earth and it turns blood orange,"

he said.

Illustration of what happens during a lunar eclipse. — During a lunar eclipse, Earth's shadow passes across the Moon, creating a partial or total eclipse, depending on the location. (ABC: Julie Ramsden)

"Some of the sunlight still passes through the atmosphere of the Earth, and our atmosphere is blue because of the oxygen and nitrogen particles in the atmosphere scattering the blue light of the sunlight, and then what's left over is the yellow and red light and that continues and hits the Moon.

"When you mix yellow and red, you get orange … the actual process is called Rayleigh scattering."

How rare is a lunar eclipse?

The last time a blood moon occurred was a few months ago in September 2025, but stargazers in Perth were left disappointed as most of it happened during cloud cover, with the total lunar eclipse before that taking place in 2022.

Mr Jones said only about half of the world could see a total lunar eclipse at a time, but it was still more parts of the Earth than during a solar eclipse.

"To see a lunar eclipse, you have a much better chance than seeing a solar eclipse," he said.

"A lunar eclipse is visible from anywhere on the night-time side of the globe."

Mr Woods said a lunar eclipse "can be quite rare", but it reminded stargazers it was easy to view.

A wide shot of orangeish moon when lunar eclipse is happening in Perth. — Tonight's event marks the end of a run of lunar eclipses. (ABC News: Andrew O'Connor)

"The great thing about total lunar eclipses is that you don't need any specialised equipment. If you do want, you can use your telescope or binoculars, but for this one you just need[ed] clear horizons to the east," he said.

When is the next one?

The next blood moon is set to take place in about two years and 10 months.

Mr Jones, who described lunar eclipses as "something really magical", said it would be "a really cool date" starting late on New Year's Eve 2028 or early morning on New Year's Day 2029, depending on local time.

A wide shot of blood moon in the sky. — The reddish-orange moon lights up the Australian sky. (ABC News: Briana Shepherd)

It will be a special viewing for Perth, since the eclipse itself will start on December 31, 2028 and finish early on January 1, 2029.

For people on the east coast due to the time difference, it will already be 2029 when the lunar eclipse starts.

And for the next total solar eclipse, July 22, 2028 is the big day where parts of northern WA like Kununurra will be in the path of totality, along with Sydney.

Tuesday, 3 March 2026

How to see tonight's 'blood moon' total lunar eclipse from Australia.

Extract from ABC News

By Amy Briggs

4 hours ago

A red Moon. — This week's blood moon will be visible across Australia. (Getty Images: NurPhoto)

As Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations draw to a close tonight, the Moon will transform into a shade of red.

Australia, Asia and the Americas will be treated to a "blood moon", also known as a total lunar eclipse.

Cultural astronomer Duane Hamacher says the event is a great chance for people to connect with the night sky.

"These days, how often do we get outside and look up at the sky?"

Matt Woods, an amateur astronomer and a tour guide at the Perth Observatory, says anyone in Australia will be able to see it if skies are clear.

"The Moon will look like it's having a chunk taken out," he says.

"Just before it starts looking like it's completely eaten, it'll turn this blood-orange colour."

And unlike the last blood moon in September, you won't have to get up in the middle of the night to see it.

Here's how you can catch a glimpse of Australia's last total lunar eclipse until 2029.

When can I see it?

The whole lunar eclipse process will take roughly three and a half hours, with the blood moon lasting for about an hour.

	NSW, ACT, Vic, Tas	SA	Qld	NT	WA (Perth)
Partial eclipse begins	8:50pm	8:20pm	7:50pm	7:20pm	N/A
Total eclipse begins	10:04pm	9:34pm	9:04pm	8:34pm	7:04pm
Total eclipse peaks	10.33pm	10.03pm	9.33pm	9.03pm	7.33pm
Total eclipse ends	11:02pm	10:32pm	10:02pm	9:32pm	8:02pm
Partial eclipse ends	12:17am	11:47pm	11:17pm	10:47pm	9:17pm

Senior curator at the Melbourne Planetarium, Tanya Hill, says there's plenty of time to see the colour of the Moon change.

"Lunar eclipses are really leisurely," she says.

What will I see where I live?

Dr Hill says people living on the east coast will get a good view of the Moon high above the horizon during totality.

"It's lowish to the horizon at the start, but by the time of the blood moon it'll be all good," she says.

While the Moon will be high in the sky for the east coast, people living in Perth and Geraldton will see the eclipse as the Moon rises.

That might make the beginning of the eclipse harder to see in the west, Dr Hill says.

A young woman stands holding a smartphone taking a photo of the super blue blood moon at Lancelin. — The Moon will be lower on the horizon in the west during the eclipse. (ABC News: Andrew O'Connor)

"[When it rises in Perth] I'm estimating probably about 50 per cent of the Moon will be covered [by the Earth's shadow]," Dr Hill says.

The Moon will also be close to the horizon in the twilight so you'll need a good vantage point.

"It's going to definitely be better if you've got good, clear horizons to the east," Mr Woods says.

"But by the time [the blood moon] finishes, you should see it."

What you will see will also depend upon weather conditions in your local area.

Mr Woods is hoping for clear skies.

Clouds washed out last year's eclipse in Perth, so last time people in the west saw a blood moon was November, 2022.

What causes a lunar eclipse?

A lunar eclipse happens when the Moon passes through the Earth's shadow.

During a total eclipse the Moon, Earth and Sun line up perfectly — a feat that is relatively rare, according to Dr Hamacher.

"It's an awesome Scrabble word called syzygy," he says.

"For any given location around the world, a total lunar eclipse happens every two and a half years."

Tonight's lunar eclipse will be the fourth visible from Australia in the past five years, with six happening in the same period around the world.

The lunar eclipse begins when the Moon moves through the Earth's outer shadow, called the penumbra.

The penumbra only casts a faint shadow, so when the Moon is inside it, Dr Hill says "you really can't spot anything".

The partial eclipse begins when the Moon starts to pass into the Earth's darkest and inner shadow — called the umbra.

Chart of the Moon's total lunar eclipse path through Earth's shadow. — A lunar eclipse's intensity and duration can depend on where it passes through Earth's shadow. (Wikimedia: March 2026 lunar eclipse/SockPuppetForTomruen/Public Domain)

The Moon will darken from the bottom right side, and will continue across until there is just a sliver of light on the top.

The total eclipse begins once the Moon is completely encompassed by Earth's shadow, turning the entire Moon a shade of red.

"A deeper, longer total lunar eclipse will see the Moon go right through the centre of the shadow," Dr Hill says.

At about 58 minutes, tonight's total eclipse is the shortest since 2021.

As the Moon leaves the umbra, it will go through another partial eclipse and penumbral phase, before it returns to being a full moon.

Why does the Moon turn red?

The colour is due to Earth's atmosphere, which absorbs blue light (hence our blue sky), and allows red light to pass through.

As the red light passes through our atmosphere it is also bent, like a magnifying glass, into Earth's darkest shadow.

If there is volcanic activity or smoke in the air at the time of a blood moon, not a lot of light will reach the Moon, making it appear a lot darker.

If the sky is clear, it appears lighter.

"It can be from a bright copper colour to a blood-red colour," Mr Woods says.

Dr Hamacher says some people may be disappointed to see that the Moon does not appear as red in real life as in some photos online.

"[Photos] make it look like the Moon has heavy red paint on it. It gets red, but it doesn't get that red," he says.

How to photograph the eclipse

Professional photos are often taken with massive camera lenses, but that doesn't mean you can't take a nice picture with what you have.

Phones have a couple of tricks to help objects in photos appear sharper and clearer.

You can often tap on an object you want to focus on in the camera app, and adjust the brightness of the image to fit with it (making it appear sharper and darker).

If the Moon looks too dark in your photos, most phone cameras will allow you to take a long exposure of a few seconds.

Taking a long exposure on a steady surface will allow the phone to take in as much light and data as possible, making the Moon appear sharper and brighter.

As the Moon will appear low in the sky for many, there will most likely be trees and buildings to contrast its colour, potentially making it appear a bit redder.

'Blood moon' and cultural meanings

The lunar new year in China starts on the second new moon after the northern winter solstice, and runs until the full moon 15 days later.

The last day of the festival is celebrated with rows of red paper lanterns signifying luck, joy and prosperity.

This year's Lantern Festival just happens to coincide with a total lunar eclipse aka 'blood moon'.

Astronomer Richard de Grijs from Macquarie University, says there isn't an explicit connection between the two events.

Lunar eclipses have been tracked by Chinese astronomers since ancient times.

Unlike the red lanterns, Dr de Grijs says a red moon is traditionally seen as a natural but "bad omen".

"A reddened moon might suggest an imbalance between yin and yang," he says.

It is a theme that is seen in other cultures.

Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island cultures associate blood moons with death, Dr Hamacher says.

"It's usually something bad, it's usually death and it's usually blood," he says.

"Torres Strait Islanders have been predicting lunar eclipses for a long time."

Peoples in the Western Torres Strait trained to be astronomers are called Zugubau Mabaig: Zugubau meaning spiritual ancestor who became a constellation, and Mabaig meaning man or person.

Part of a Zugubau Mabaig's final stage of initiation was to predict when the lunar eclipses would occur, so a ceremony could be prepared months in advance.

Dr Hamacher says this could be done about 19 years in advance of a total lunar eclipse using skills and knowledge passed down for thousands of years.

"Nowhere … have I seen anything anywhere, that talks about a culture that shares knowledge orally, being able to predict an eclipse."