For those observers that were unfortunately clouded out, NASA’s online live streaming of the event broadcast from Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, with a live feed from the Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles, California, proved enormously popular.
Observers in the British Isles have to wait until the evening of Friday, 27 July 2018 for the next ‘normal’ total lunar eclipse visible from these shores, while the next totally eclipsed supermoon entails a slightly longer wait: 8 October 2033.
While you probably don’t relish the prospect of waking up in the small hours of most Monday mornings, you will want to set your alarm for 2am BST on Monday, 28 September for this month’s showstopper celestial event — a rare total lunar eclipse of an unusually large ‘supermoon’ visible in its entirety (weather permitting) from the British Isles!
On the night of 12-13 December, the waxing gibbous Moon glides in front of the loose open star cluster known as the Hyades in the constellation of Taurus, culminating in the occultation of bright star Aldebaran around 5:24am GMT for observers in the British Isles. In North America, the event occurs at a more sociable hour late into the evening of 12 December.
The full Moon of 8 April 2020 occurs just 8½ hours after perigee, its closest point to Earth in the oval-shaped lunar orbit. A full Moon occurring close to perigee is popularly called a supermoon, and this one will be 8½ percent larger than average. This is also the closest full Moon of the year and we’ll not see one larger until 5 November 2025.
