‘Lunar trifecta’: super-blue blood moon a show-stopper
THE moon put on a rare cosmic show on Wednesday: a red/blue moon, super big and super bright.
It’s the first time in 35 years a blue moon has synced with a supermoon and a total lunar eclipse, or blood moon because of its red hue.
Hawaii and Alaska had the best seats, along with the Canadian Yukon, Australia and Asia. The western US also had good viewing, along with Russia.
At the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, hundreds gathered on the lawn in the wee hours under clear skies. Traffic was backed up more than 2km around the observatory.
Sky-gazers also lined the beach near the Santa Monica Pier, some snapping photos and others reclining in the sand, their faces turned upward.
John Cook joined fellow photography enthusiasts at the pier, using the ferris wheel and roller-coaster for his foreground. “It was incredible,” said Cook, a visual effects artist for films. Photographers also gathered at the Telegraph Hill neighbourhood of San Francisco, striving to get the famous Coit Tower in their moon shots.
In San Francisco’s Marina district, a crowd gathered to watch the super blue blood moon, as Nasa calls it, set over the Golden Gate Bridge. Spectators were lucky: there were clear skies and no trace of the city’s famous fog.
“It’s very cinematic, the way the moon is changing colours and reflecting on the water,” said Clara Cambon, who arrived at about 5.30am with her husband.
On the other side of the Pacific, where it was already nightfall, hundreds descended on the Tokyo Garden Terrace Kioicho complex, where telescopes and binoculars were plentiful. A TV monitor showed zoom-in views of the moon and a university professor gave a rundown as the eclipse unfolded.
The US east coast, Europe and most of South America and Africa were out of luck for the total eclipse. At Cape Canaveral, Florida, where a rocket delivered America’s first satellite – Explorer 1 – to orbit exactly 60 years ago, the blue supermoon loomed large in the sky.
The second full moon in a calendar month is a blue moon. This one also happened to be an especially close and bright moon, or supermoon. Add a total eclipse, known as a blood moon for its red tint, and it was a lunar show-stopper.
Nasa called it a lunar trifecta: the first super blue blood moon since 1982. That combination won’t happen again until 2037.
A total lunar eclipse – considered the most scientific of Wednesday’s threesome – occurs when the sun, Earth and moon line up perfectly, casting Earth’s shadow on the moon.
Scientists were keen to study the sharp, sudden drop in temperature at the lunar surface as Earth’s shadow blankets the moon. During the more than one hour of totality, the temperature had plunged 38°C, said Dr Noah Petro, deputy project scientist for Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been circling the moon since 2009.
His team took special precautions to keep the spacecraft warm during the eclipse.