Quote:IT’S been called a once-in-a-lifetime lunar trifecta and Aussies will have one of the best seats in the house.
Later this month, we are set to witness a rare lunar event dubbed the “super red blue moon” as three lunar phenomena converge at the same time.
“The title ‘super red blue moon’ sounds a bit peculiar, but it describes an event where three separate lunar conditions come together simultaneously,” said Professor Bill Boyd, from the School of Environment, Science and Engineering at Southern Cross University.
Each of the lunar events have their own life cycle but this year they all happen at the same time and “barring cloud cover, we will get as good a view anybody in the world, here in Australia, certainly on the east coast,” he said.
A super moon occurs at the point when our moon reaches its closest distance to earth during its elliptic orbit, some 25,000km closer than on average. As a result, it appears much bigger and about 30 per cent brighter.
As for the red part, that happens during a lunar eclipse when the sun, earth and moon perfectly align and the moon passes directly through the earth’s shadow.
“The spectacular thing this time is that it’s going to pass fully into the middle of the shade, and as it does it gets more and more covered in shadow,” Professor Boyd said. But instead of going dark, the way the sunlight refracts around the Earth gives the moon a red hue as some of the sunlight entering the Earth’s atmosphere, notably the red spectrum, is scattered in a way that gently illuminates the moon behind.
Sometimes called a blood moon, it is a rare astronomical event when a swollen super moon and lunar eclipse combine.
As for the blue, that’s somewhat of a misnomer. Instead of referring to a visible colour, it is a name commonly used to describe a second full moon in a month.
“Normally we get one full moon in a month but the lunar cycle, the lunar months if you like, are slightly shorter than the solar ones, and so we have an extra moon every now and then.”
Traditionally the term referred to a fourth full moon in a season “but it’s now come to be thought of as the second moon in a month”.
The event will take place in the middle of the night on January 31 and has avid stargazers and celestial photographers chomping at the bit.
“This is an extremely unusual occurrence. It will be unlikely for all three celestial events to converge again within the next century,” Professor Boyd said.
He was planning to set up shop on a headland on the east coast with a good vantage point to the north but after hearing about a group of local stargazers in Lismore, it might turn out to be a rather more festive event than he first thought.
“These are amateur stargazers and apparently they’re talking about setting up an event ... where I assume they’ll get out their telescopes and make a bit of a party of it,” he said. “I think there’s going to be these little parties all over the place. I’ve been told the lighthouse at Byron Bay is likely to be extremely popular.”
Across the New South Wales’ North Coast and Gold Coast, the super red blue moon starts at 10.48pm eastern standard time on January 31, eclipsing fully from 11.51pm to 1.07am, and ending at 2.11am.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/technology/science/january-to-end-with-lunar-trife...
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