Sunday, Bloody Sunday
It is going to be a late night for star-gazers.
The super rare "super blood moon" arrives Sunday night for the first time since 1982 and the last time until 2033.
According to various sources — we cribbed our information from NASA's website, science.nasa.gov — the annual harvest Moon will coincide with both a lunar eclipse and the occurrence of a "super moon," when Earth's nearest neighbor is as near as it gets.
It all should combine to make for a large, bright, orangy object that should be quite a show.
The harvest moon, which occurs on the first full Moon after the arrival of autumn (that arrival was Wednesday this past week) is always a show in and of itself. The phenomenon is named for the days when farmers took advantage of the extra moonlight to work in the fields a little bit later.
The super moon, which apparently is not that rare in and of itself, happens when the moon's elliptical orbit brings it closest to our planet.
A lunar eclipse occurs when the moon passes through Earth's shadow, lining up with the sun and Earth.
The last phenomenon is the one that will reportedly make the moon appear like "a giant red orb," in NASA's words.
Since where you stand on Earth dictates how the moon looks to you at any given time, the super blood moon's arrival will come at different times in different places.
To see when it will hit your town, visit the U.S. Naval Observatory's calculator, found here.
In North Adams, for example, the moonrise is scheduled for 6:33 p.m., an the eclipse itself will run from 10:10 until 11:23 with the middle falling at 10:47.
Incidentally, the Weather Channel's website calls for clear skies and zero percent chance of rain in the North Berkshires from 10 p.m. to midnight, and temperatures are forecast a comfortable 52 degrees.
For what it's worth, those who watch the skies for a living spent last week pushing back against the talk of "blood moons" and "super moons."
According to WorldNetDaily, a spokesman for the U.S. Naval Observatory said, "There’s a part of me that wishes that this ‘Supermoon’ moniker would just dry up and blow away, like the ‘Blood Moon’ that accompanied the most recent lunar eclipse, because it tends to promulgate a lot of misinformation."
And last week, Williams College issued a news release featuring comments from professor Jay Pasachoff, who encouraged people to "enjoy the view," but cautioned against hyperbole.
"Misleadingly, some articles are calling it a 'blood moon,' which is just superstition and astrology and has nothing to do with what will actually happen," Pasachoff said. "Merely because the moon will look faintly reddish doesn't justify using the word 'blood.' "
Tags: astronomy, moon ,
