Total Lunar eclipse‬, ‪Supermoon‬, ‪Blue moon‬, ‪Eclipse‬‬ In Januvary

                               Total Lunar eclipse‬, ‪Supermoon‬, ‪Blue moon‬, ‪Eclipse‬‬ In Januvary

ON Wednesday night, India  will be in for a treat with a rare lunar trifecta taking place. Consisting of a total lunar eclipse, supermoon and blue moon

On the 31st, the moon will officially reach its full phase at 8:27 a.m. ET (13:27 UT). This is the second full moon to occur in a calendar month, an event commonly referred to as a blue moon. Around the same time, the full moon will be making an especially close approach to Earth, a phenomenon popularly called a supermoon.

Ironically a blue moon isn’t even blue. The term instead refers to when there is a second full moon in a calendar month.

Lastly, the supermoon part comes into play as the moon will be closest to Earth as it orbits around us. While it will loom large in the sky it will in fact still be 360,198km away.

Super Blue Blood Moon 2018

The Blue Moon – second of two full moons in one calendar month – will pass through the Earth’s shadow on January 31, 2018, to give us a total lunar eclipse. Totality, when the moon will be entirely inside the Earth’s dark umbral shadow, will last a bit more than one-and-a-quarter hours. The January 31 full moon is also the third in a series of three straight full moon supermoons – that is, super-close full moons. It’s the first of two Blue Moons in 2018. So it’s not just a total lunar eclipse, or a Blue Moon, or a supermoon. It’s all three … a super Blue Moon total eclipse!

The Blood Moon occurs because the Earth is passing between the Moon and the Sun, which gives the Moon a reddish tint to it. It's caused by light bending around the Earth because of gravity passing around a portion of the atmosphere, more commonly known as a lunar eclipse.

A Blue Moon combined with a Supermoon (when the Moon is at its closest point to Earth and appears to be 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than normal) the rare phenomena is called a Super Blue Blood Moon happens. Supermoons generally only occur once every 14 months and will not happen again until January 2019.

A blue moon is the second full moon in a month. A supermoon is a particularly close full or new moon, appearing somewhat brighter and bigger. A total lunar eclipse — or blood moon for its reddish tinge — has the moon completely bathed in Earth’s shadow.

“I’m calling it the Super Bowl of moons,” lunar scientist Noah Petro said Monday from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The moon will be closest to Earth on Tuesday, 359,000 kilometres. That’s about 2,400 kilometres farther than the supermoon on Jan. 1. Midway through Wednesday’s eclipse, the moon will be even farther away, 360,200 kilometres — but still within unofficial supermoon guidelines.

The event is causing a buzz because it combines three unusual lunar events -- an extra big super moon, a blue moon and a total lunar eclipse.

"It's an astronomical trifecta," said Kelly Beatty, a senior editor at Sky and Telescope magazine.

A blue moon refers to the second full moon in a month. Typically, a blue moon happens every two years and eight months.

WHERE WILL THE ECLIPSE BE VISIBLE?

For this month’s super blue blood moon, the best views will be for people on the northern part of North America’s West Coast, as well for viewers across China, Japan, and most of Australia. Observers there will witness the entire eclipse from beginning to end during the early morning hours of January 31.

WHAT HAPPENS IF I CAN’T SEE TOTALITY?

If you get clouded out or it’s daytime where you are at the time of the eclipse, you can still tune in to the show online via webcasts such as the Virtual Telescope Project and Slooh. And if you happen to miss out this time around, the next total lunar eclipse will arrive on July 27 and will be visible from Asia, Australia, Africa, Europe, and South America.