He said astronomers call the series a lunar eclipse tetrad.
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When a full or new moon makes its closest approach to Earth, that’s a supermoon.
A rare perigee lunar eclipse shone in the night sky on Sunday, September 27, visible from coast to coast in the United States.
It’s called a super moon because it will appear to be 17 percent larger than normal. “It’s purely coincidental, there is no physics that occurs, it’s just random”.
This eclipse will be the fourth in two years and all have happened on Jewish holidays – and some Christians evangelicals espouse the belief that it signals the end of times.
The spectacle was in the early hours, with the “total” phase – when the moon is completely in shadow – lasting from 3.11am to 4.24am, ending when the moon left the Earth’s shadow at 6.24am.
Eclipses of the moon happen when the sun, earth and moon are aligned to form a straight line. “It’s during that period that we see the moon turn a dark brown or orange colour and this is what is often termed a blood moon”.
Roberts says it’s a “super moon” because it’s 14 per cent brighter than usual and it’s a harvest moon, which before the days of electricity was what farmers used to harvest late into the evening.
“What I find really interesting about any kind of eclipse is you really get to see a lot of different solar system bodies in motion”, Ludtke said.
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According to the South African Weather Service, the interior of the country should have mostly clear skies around 3am, while from Cape Town up to Durban cloudy skies might interfere in a clear viewing.
