NASA presents a different view of upcoming supermoon

So in the evening on September 27th in the USA, people will be able to view a total lunar eclipse of the largest moon we can see for over an hour. “On September 27, we’re going to have a perigee full moon – the closest full moon of the year”, commented Noah Petro, NASA’s Deputy Project scientist for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. A supermoon is when a full moon occurs at the same time as its perigree, the point in orbit when it’s closest to Earth.

The team’s modeling shows that the peak stresses are reached when the moon is farthest from Earth in its orbit.

The moon appears about 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter at perigee than it does at apogee, according to NASA. However the proverbial stars apparently only align for this “mega-event” every once in a couple of decades which makes it a much rarer phenomenon than a supermoon or a lunar eclipse separately. “Based on the size of the scarps, we estimate the distance between the moon’s center and its surface shrank by about 300 feet”, Watters said. Regular lunar eclipses happen several times a year, but the two events don’t happen at the same time very often, so it could be a once in a lifetime event for sky gazers. This will not be the celestial sight on Earth, however; this is the anticipated view from the moon. Thereby, when it is the farthest from the Earth it is called an apogee and the closest it gets to the Earth is called a perigee.

In the video, the dark mass of Earth passes in front of the sun to blot out all light, extinguishing the silvery expanse of the lunar horizon and plunging the blackness of space into even blacker shadow.

A total lunar eclipse will be observable in the night sky on Sunday, September 27. While in syzygy, the Earth casts its shadow on the moon’s surface.

“There is a pattern in the orientations of the thousands of faults and it suggests something else is influencing their formation, something that’s also acting on a global scale-‘massaging’ and realigning them”, said Thomas Watters, one of the researchers, in a news release.

Totality, the point when the Moon is fully obscured, will begin at 10:11 p.m. EDT (9:11 p.m. CDT) and last for approximately 71 minutes.

The only thing that will happen on Earth during an eclipse is that people will wake up the next morning with neck pain because they spent the night looking up.