Coming on the evening of Feb. 20 is an astronomical spectacle which should be a rare treat for amateur astronomers Texan eyes and especially a total lunar eclipse.

Unlike solar eclipses, lunar eclipses are perfectly safe to watch with the naked eye, as well as with binoculars or telescopes, which should help enhance the red coloration will take the moon during the phenomena. The event should be visible across the eastern and southern Continental United States as well as Western Europe.

Although rarely eclipses seem to occur, the phenomena are a fairly regular event cosmic terms. In the last 5000 years, there have been over 7700 lunar eclipses, partial and total, which average to around one and a half per year.

It is entirely possible to have no lunar eclipses of any kind in a year or as many as three. The last time there were three lunar eclipses in a year was in 1982, and the next time will be in 2013, but none of them will be total.

The last total lunar eclipse visible to what is in Texas on Oct. 27, 2004, though the view in Dallas was at least partially obscured by cloud cover. It looks as though after nearly four years, Dallas residents may once again suffer the same fate.