Locals enjoy blood moon amid Mars’ approach fears |30 July 2018

The Seychelles social media was awash with exchange of information and superstition about the century’s longest “blood moon” on Friday when Earth eclipsed our natural satellite and planet Mars came closer to us than ever since 2003.

People in places like Le Rocher took clear pictures of the red moon as others in La Misère lamented mist prevented them from seeing the spectacle as the rest of us contended with partial views in between clouds.

Others locked into websites that offered live coverage of the events.

Planet Mars was clearly visible with the naked eye when it came to just 55 million kilometres from Earth, compared with its usual average distance of 225 million kilometres.

Mars is still at “our doorstep”until tomorrow but by mid-August, it will become fainter as Mars and Earth travel farther away from each other in their orbits around the Sun.

Those who miss to see it now will get a similar chance to view the spectacle on October 6, 2020 according to Nasa (National Aeronautics and Space Administration).

As it rose, during this total eclipse, Earth's natural satellite turned a striking shade of red or ruddy brown.

The “totality” period, where light from the Moon was totally obscured, lasted for one hour, 43 minutes.

At least part of the eclipse was visible from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Australia, most of Asia and South America.

Mars has also been at its brightest, putting two bright red objects in our sky.

For some, the joy of watching these changed to worry when speculation that the end of the world was near started doing their rounds, and their concern deepened when pictures of the spectacle were accompanied by Biblical quotes saying such occurrences were end-time signs.

Their minds were not any more at rest when reports emerged that Google Translate was changing innocent messages to doomsday warnings.

Fears of an imminent apocalypse have been sparked by a mysterious warning from Google Translate.

The language-translation app is telling users that we're “approaching the end times” – and no one's quite sure why.

Typing the word “dog” into Google Translate and translating from Yoruba (a West African language) to English spits out the exact same word, “dog”.

But type “dog” 22 times in a row and a sinister message appears instead.

“Doomsday Clock is three minutes at twelve,” it begins.

“We are experiencing characters and a dramatic developments in the world, which indicate that we are increasingly approaching the end times and Jesus’ return,” the application says.