What’s in a name? Rare ‘super blood wolf moon’ wows stargazers

Author : mamun Published: January 21, 2019

Updated

January 21, 2019 18:54:54

Photo:
A total lunar eclipse that is called a ‘super blood wolf moon’ seen from Encinitas, California. (Reuters: Mike Blake)

Stargazers in the northern hemisphere have been treated in the early hours of this morning to a rare lunar phenomenon that is being called a “super blood wolf moon”.

The entire eclipse took more than three hours. Totality — when the moon’s completely bathed in Earth’s shadow — lasted one hour.

Weather permitting, the celestial phenomenon could be seen from western and northern Europe and the Americas — but it wasn’t visible from Australia.

Why the long name?

Photo:
People watched the supermoon rise behind the downtown Los Angeles skyline. (AP: Ringo HW Chiu)

This assembly of words draws meaning from a convergence of lunar events.

When the moon is full and especially close to Earth, it’s called a super moon.

This one is the first of 2019 and occurs when a full moon coincides with the point in orbit when it’s closest to Earth.

Supermoon or superbuzz?

This lunar eclipse occurs more than a day after the Moon has come closest to Earth in this orbit. That just makes it a ‘supermoon’ — the third in three months — based on a loose definition first coined by an astrologist.

But it’s hard to spot the difference between a supermoon, even at its closest, and a regular full moon, says Dr Hill.

“There’s a tiny difference, but it’s not something we can see or relate to in the night sky.

“The ‘supermoon’ is just a bit of a superbuzz,” she says.

Find out more in our Beginner’s Guide to the Moon.

While the moon totally eclipses, it never goes complete dark, but takes on a coppery red glow — called a blood moon.

The blood moon’s red hue is the result of sunlight traveling through the Earth’s dusty, polluted atmosphere.

The shorter, more pliable blue wavelengths of light are scattered outside the Earth’s shadow and the longer, less bendable red wavelengths are refracted toward the moon.

And since it appears in January, when wolves howl in hunger outside villages, it has earned the name wolf moon.

Et voila! A super blood wolf moon.

Astronomer Walter Freeman told the ABC the most special aspect was the total lunar eclipse — the supermoon and wolf moon he said were much less exciting.

“They’re kind of artificial things people have created,” he said.

“Those two things are kind of normal and mundane, the really exciting thing is the fact that there is a lunar eclipse.”

Photo:
The moon is seen rising behind the Empire State Building before the eclipse. (AP: Julio Cortez)

Photo:
The moon above the ‘Maritime Prowess’ statue ahead of the Lunar Eclipse, in Hull, England. (AP: Danny Lawson/PA)