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.
When a full Moon makes its closest pass to Earth in its orbit it appears up to 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than average, making it a supermoon. This month’s full Moon on Monday 14 November is the closest Moon to Earth since 26 January 1948. The Moon won’t be this super again until 25 November 2034!
If skies are clear in Western Europe on the first evening of 2018, be sure to glance up at the almost full Moon in the constellation of Gemini. If it seems a bit larger than usual then you’d be right, for the lunar orb is at its closest for the year, making the full Moon of 2 January a supermoon.
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.
