Cloudy weather blocked Seattle’s view of last night’s “super blue blood moon” — but as a consolation, skywatchers from Vancouver to Siberia shared their images of the total lunar eclipse.
Total lunar eclipses arise when Earth’s shadow falls fully over the moon, and the long-wavelength light that’s refracted by our planet’s atmosphere turns the full moon’s disk a sunset-like shade of red.
Last night’s event received an extra burst of hype because it took place during a time when the moon is closer to Earth than usual (qualifying by some definitions as a “supermoon”), and because it was the second full moon in the course of a month (a so-called “blue moon”).
Putting all these features together results in the super-blue-blood label, which NASA readily adopted. “Sounds like an opportunity for vampires,” University of Washington astronomer Julie Lutz joked.
Whatever you call it, the lunar eclipse is totally worth a recap …
Hits from around the world, including an enhanced view from Vancouver, B.C.:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BengETwFQUc/
https://twitter.com/timdurkan/status/958732920050479104
https://twitter.com/latimes/status/958741728701362177
https://twitter.com/AliVelshi/status/958742381465042944
https://twitter.com/TIME/status/958742504978993153
https://twitter.com/siberian_times/status/958713165663162368
Notable misses from the Seattle area:
https://twitter.com/NWSSeattle/status/958684901779243009
https://twitter.com/LattetownHouse/status/958697629897994240
https://twitter.com/seattlerams_nfl/status/958708017284857856
And a parting shot from California:
If you missed the total lunar eclipse — or, more likely, slept through it between 5 and 6 a.m. PT — another one is due to be visible from all of North and South America on Jan. 20, 2019.
That eclipse will be at a more sensible hour, starting at 8:41 p.m. PT, and we’ll have almost a year to do something about the Northwest’s inconveniently cloudy weather.