Rare supermoon lunar eclipse happens Sunday just after sunset

The elliptical orbit of the moon around the Earth can lead to our full moon being APOGEE, the moon’s farthest point from Earth, or PERIGEE, the moon’s closest point to earth.

What is a total lunar eclipse? The clouds open up and it looks like you’re going to see something.

That’s a good thing because a rare supermoon eclipse will be visible in the night sky.

The last “supermoon” lunar eclipse occurred in 1982 and if you miss this event, your next chance won’t come around until 2033.

NASA is LIVE Streaming the eclipse here on Sunday night and you can ask questions about what you’re seeing at #asknasa.

On the night the moon is closest, it’s called a perigee moon, also known as a “Supermoon“. It looks that way because the moon is actually closer to the Earth.

Partial eclipse ends 9:27 p.m.

The Ames Area Amateur Astronomers is having a Blood Moon Lunar Eclipse Party at the observatory in McFarland Park. The “total eclipse” stage lasts until about 8:23 p.m., so there’s plenty of time to view the event!

“What we have coming up is the entire moon’s moving into the thickest part of the earth’s shadow”, explains Pitkin.

Petro, the deputy project scientist for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, says the moon will appear about 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter in the sky. The redness of this light gives the moon a rusty color, resulting in the nickname of this type of eclipse: a “blood moon”. But it doesn’t totally shade the moon, some light with longer wavelengths passes through Earth’s atmosphere thanks to refraction and the moon appears reddish.

If you’re in the eastern United States you should be able to see the eclipse just fine on Sunday.