Lunar Eclipse Google Doodle livestreams the Moon

There's a new Google Doodle! And this one's crater than ever -- it celebrates last night's total lunar eclipse.

Visit the Google home page today and you'll be treated to a playable movie of the eclipse, which turned the Moon a scary blood-red colour. Drag the scroll bar underneath the logo to view individual stages of the cosmic event.

Google updated its homepage through the night to feature the very latest image of the moon, using the Slooh space camera, which collects user photos of space events, and is partnering with Google Sky to map space.

Last night's eclipse was visible rising over South America, Africa and Europe, and was also visible from Asia and Australia. It was the first total lunar eclipse of the year, and lasted a total of 1 hour, 40 minutes and 52 seconds.

It was a particularly dark eclipse too, because part of the moon passed through the very centre of the Earth's shadow. These rare total eclipses are known as Central lunar eclipses.

The reason the moon appears to turn red during an eclipse is because Earth's atmosphere filters light from the Sun, with only the reddest light making it through to hit the Moon.

We recommend heading over to Google today if you missed the real eclipse (we did -- we were catching up on Game of Thrones), but failing that, there's going to be another one on 10 December, so put that date in your diary.

Google's Doodles are getting increasingly ambitious. The world spent 10.7 million hours in total playing with last week's Les Paul playable Google logo, which Extreme Tech reckons cost about $268m in lost productivity, as bored office workers passed the time trying to strum the opening bit to Smoke on the Water.

We like this Doodle even more. Rock and roll is temporary, space is forever!