It’s extremely unusual for a supermoon and total lunar eclipse to happen at the same time, as they will this weekend.
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“The most unique thing about the 2014-2015 tetrad is that all of them are visible for all or parts of the U.S.”, NASA eclipse expert Fred Espenak said in a statement previous year. Simply put, a lunar eclipse happens when the Earth’s shadow blocks sunlight from getting to the moon.
The Moon will be at its closest orbital point to Earth, called perigee, while also in its brightest phase.
“Here we have had four total lunar eclipses in a row on Passover and Tabernacles”, he said. A lunar eclipse can be easily viewed with the naked eye, but viewing it through a telescope adds detail.
While viewing the moon when it is in the penumbral shadow of the Earth, we don’t see much change in the light. This Sunday night will give us a full moon, a super moon and blood moon, ” Rumstay said.
The blood moon acquires a golden, copper, or even rusty-red color depending on where the sun is. A supermoon only appears to be 14 percent larger than when it’s at its apparent smallest (i.e, the less-famous “micromoon”).
But the moon won’t be the only star of the show at the observatory Sunday night.
Watch NASA’s live stream of the supermoon eclipse on September 27 from 8:00 p.m. until at least 11:30 p.m. EDT, broadcast from Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., with a live feed from the Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles, Calif. Mitzi Adams, a NASA solar physicist at Marshall, will discuss the eclipse and answer questions from Twitter.
Many stargazers, professional and amateur alike, dislike the term “supermoon”, noting the visible difference between a moon and supermoon is slight to all but the most faithful observers.
AccuWeather reports a spectrum of lunar events will occur Sunday evening in an event that won’t happen for another 18 years.
And as the eclipse draws to an end, the question of the hour always is: when’s the next one?
“It’s a attractive sight in the nighttime sky”, says Mark Hammergren, an astronomer at Chicago’s Adler Planetarium.
Just a little tip to finish off that winning photo – “If you want to do something dramatic, get a telephoto and wait for it to be rising or setting, or near interesting objects because the composition is better”.
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No telescope or binoculars are needed, just look up, you can’t miss it!
