‘Super blue blood Moon’ delights global stargazers
STARGAZERS across large swaths of the globe – from the streets of Los Angeles to the slopes of a smoldering Philippine volcano – had the chance to witness a rare “super blue blood Moon” Wednesday, when Earth’s shadow bathed our satellite in a coppery hue.
The celestial show was the result of the Sun, Earth, and Moon lining up for a lunar eclipse just as the Moon is near its closest orbit point to Earth, making it appear “super” large.
It is the second full Moon within the same month, a phenom- enon called a“blue” Moon which has nothing to do with its colour. The “blood” in the name comes from the reddish brown colour the Moon takes on when Earth enters between it and the sun, cutting off the light rays that usually brighten the lunar surface.
The eclipse began around 3:45am (1145 GMT), as a black shadow began to devour one corner of the gray-white Moon.
An hour later, the lunar surface was plunged into darkness, known as totality. Then, rusty tones began to sheath the Moon, reflecting the light of all the sunrises and sunsets on Earth at the same moment.
There were gasps of delight at that moment in a school in the Philippines town on Guinobatan where some of the 90,000 people who have fled the erupting Mount Mayon volcano were sheltering. There they were treated to a double-spectacle – a supermoon eclipse rising over a mountain spewing lava.
On the other side of the Pacific, thousands were gathering at Los Angeles’s Griffith Observatory, which opened its doors at 3:30am (1130 GMT) to a crowd expected to reach 2,000.
Some had waited in line since 10pm the night before, hoping for a choice viewing spot, many bringing their own telescopes to set up on the lawn.
The extreme east of Africa, the Middle East and Asia, Russia, Australia and New Zealand could enjoy the spectacle on Wednesday night, weather depending, as the Moon rose there. But most of South America, Africa and Europe, where the alignment occurs in the middle of the day, missed out on the show.
In the Indonesian capital Jakarta, several thousand people lined up at the planetarium to catch a glimpse of the rare event on one of its telescopes.
If you missed this one, the next blue Moon total lunar eclipse will happen in 2028, though it won’t be quite as large since it will not be as close to Earth.