People in North, Central and South America will be able to see the total lunar eclipse Sunday night.
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Apart from getting to see a Super Moon, they will also witness a total lunar eclipse when the moon will take on a reddish-orange hue.
Lunar eclipses occur when the Moon, Earth and Sun line up in roughly a straight line, but the Earth is in between the Moon and Sun; therefore, the Moon is in the Earth’s shadow.
The moon doesn’t create any of its own light.
We’ll all just have to wait and find out if the Super Blood Moon is the last thing we see before our planet is destroyed. That is because the moon was in its Perigee, or closest to the earth in its elliptical orbit of 27.3 days. A total lunar eclipse will be visible to everyone in southern Arizona, but Adam Block at the University of Arizona Mount Lemmon SkyCenter will have a special vantage point from over 9,000 feet up.
Why will the moon look bigger? The coloring is caused by Earth’s atmosphere scattering sunlight into the shadow.
But you will have to be up early to see it – the eclipse is likely to start above Huddersfield at 2.08am and be over by 5am. Alongside this, during a lunar eclipse the moon will turn a fantastic red/orange colour. “It really ought to be called a tiny, slightly little bit bigger moon, rather than the supermoon“.
The Marshall Space Flight Center plans to offer views of the eclipse from the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, the Fernbank Observatory in Atlanta and other locations across the United States. We explain why the Supermoon Lunar Eclipse is a rare event and how it occurs. Weather permitting, the supermoon will be visible after nightfall, and the eclipse will cast it into shadow beginning at 8:11 p.m. ET.
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As with most events involving the night sky, try to get to a place where light pollution is as low as possible.
