A supermoon and lunar eclipse event is scheduled to occur on September 27. It will be visible from both Americas, Europe, western Asia and Africa, offering skywatchers the chance to witness an elusive celestial treat.
A so called supermoon phenomenon is when Earth’s moon appears to be exceptionally large and bright in the night’s sky. It generally happens when the moon comes in its full phase, meaning that it will be at the closest it can get to our planet. While a lunar eclipse occurs when the moon passes in the Earth’s shadow, blocking almost all of the sun’s light.
The phenomenon that will occur on September 27 is remarkable, considering that a lunar eclipse and supermoon seldom occur simultaneously.
The last supermoon and lunar eclipse combination happened back in 1982. If some of you will miss this year’s supermoon, your next chance will come two decades later since the next celestial event of this kind is scheduled for 2033.
Lunar eclipses and supermoons happen separately quite often, but Noah Petro of NASA said that the combined phenomena is so rare that entire generations may have no witnessed the celestial event. Usually, the phenomenon occurs every once a couple of decades.
“The orbit of the moon around Earth is inclined to the axis of Earth and the orbital plane of all these things just falls into place every once in a while. When the rhythms line up, you might get three to four eclipses in a row or a supermoon and an eclipse happening,” explained Noah Petro, planetary geologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
Some more superstitious people believe that the rare astrological event may announce that the end of the world is nigh. Christians believe that the phenomenon could bring with it a set of devastating events passed on a famous Bible passage that reads “The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord comes.”
Astrologists said, however, that the event is harmless and that it will last for one hour and 13 minutes. Petro jokes that that the only bad thing that can happen after the event is people waking up in the morning with neck pain, considering the time they will spent looking up at the sky.
Photo Credits wikipedia.org
