CANADA: Stargazers across the globe were served a space extravaganza last night in the form of the blood moon lunar eclipse. Overnight, the skies played host to one of the rarest events in the universe. First of all, there was a super moon – meaning the moon appeared bigger in the sky than normal. But added to that was a lunar eclipse, meaning it glowed red in the night sky. In preparation for the event, NASA produced a fascinating video clearly explaining what happens, why and just how rare it is.
Before last night, the most recent super blood moon occurred in 1982 and the next one will not appear in the skies until 2033.The moon was at its brightest at around 2am this morning.
According to Space.com , the moon was set to enter the Earth’s ‘umbral shadow’ at 1:07am on Monday and then “64 minutes later, the moon is entirely within the shadow and sails on within it for 72 minutes until it begins to find its way out at the lower left edge”.The lunar eclipse lasted for around one hour and 12 minutes.It was visible to Europe, North and South America, Africa parts of West Asia and the eastern Pacific.
According to Space.com , as with all lunar eclipses, the region of visibility for last night’s super blood moon lunar eclipse was set to encompass more than half of the planet.
Before the event, they wrote, “Nearly 1 billion people in the Western Hemisphere, nearly 1.5 billion throughout much of Europe and Africa and perhaps another 500 million in western Asia will be able to watch as the Harvest Full Moon becomes a shadow of its former self and morphs into a glowing coppery ball.”There’s no evidence of this at all.
As for a giant asteroid, a NASA spokesperson said, “NASA knows of no asteroid or comet currently on a collision course with Earth, so the probability of a major collision is quite small. In fact, as best as we can tell, no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years.”
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