Sunday treat in store as supermoon meets total eclipse

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/24/supermoon-meets-total-eclipse-sunday?CMP=share_btn_fb

Ian Sample
Sept. 24, 2015

The moon will loom large and turn coppery red on Sunday night as its closest approach to Earth coincides with a total lunar eclipse.

The rare arrangement of the Earth, moon and sun has not occurred since Survivor topped the charts with Eye of the Tiger in 1982, and the same orbital display will not happen again until 2033.

Because the moon follows an elliptical orbit, its average distance from the Earth changes, from as far away as 252,000 miles, to as near as 226,000 miles.

On Sunday evening, the moon will be at its closest, making it appear as a supermoon 14% larger in the sky than an average full moon. A one-penny coin is larger than a five-pence piece by the same percentage.

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The moon will not be blotted out, but will instead turn dark red. Though no sunlight will fall directly on the moon, its surface will be illuminated by light rays that refract through Earth’s atmosphere. Red light will bend around the Earth and light up the moon, but blue light will be scattered and lost in the atmosphere.

“The moon usually turns a beautiful copper colour in a lunar eclipse. The light that shines on the moon is effectively the light of all the sunsets and sunrises on Earth,” said Marek Kukula, public astronomer at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.

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Lunar eclipses are visible from any spot where the moon appears above the horizon. The latest total lunar eclipse can be seen from west Africa, most of western Europe, most of North America and the whole of South America. In the US, the display will be visible late on Sunday afternoon and evening.

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http://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/lunar/2015-september-28

n the US, Canada, and Central and South America, this rare Total Lunar Eclipse of a Supermoon will begin on the evening of September 27, 2015. In Europe, South/East Asia, Africa, the Arctic, and in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans it starts after midnight on September 28, 2015.

Also called a Blood Moon this eclipse will last for about 1 hour and 12 minutes.

[There is a list of cities around the world where you can find out when the eclipse will happen at that location.]