Super Harvest Moon rising Tuesday night

Keep the cameras handy!

The full “Harvest Moon” will rise high in the sky Tuesday night, and depending on your angle of viewing, the moon may appear larger than average. This is because the September Full Moon will also be a “supermoon”.

The Harvest Moon is the second of 4 super moons in 2024:

• Monday, August 19, 2024
• Tuesday, September 17, 2024
• Thursday, October 17, 2024
• Friday, November 15, 2024

Why is this a “Supermoon’?

This month, the full moon earns the “super” label because it reaches its full phase within a few days of perigee, the closest point in the Moon’s not-so-circular orbit.

This makes it appear about 7% larger in the sky than average (hardly perceptible) but about 14% brighter than an average full moon.

The best time to view the supermoon is around sunset as the Moon is rising. This is because the Moon appears even bigger because your eye has the horizon, along with trees and buildings, to compare it with.

I heard this was also a lunar eclipse?

This month, the Harvest Moon will be a partial lunar eclipse.

A lunar eclipse occurs when the full moon moves into the shadow of Earth. It is at this point that the moon, Earth and sun are exactly or closely aligned.

As the moon moves into the Earth’s shadow, the moon’s surface begins to darken and eventually a color shift occurs. This is often known as a “Blood Moon”.

But what is causing this color change?

As the moon moves into Earth’s shadow, the Earth blocks all sunlight from reaching the moon’s surface. The only light that is reaching the moon is light that has traveled through Earth’s atmosphere, which filters out all blue wavelengths and only allows reddish wavelengths to pass through.

As a result, only reddish light is able to travel from Earth to the moon -- which is then reflected back to Earth for us to see.

However, this year’s Harvest Moon is only a partial lunar eclipse, and so the reddish hue will be missing Tuesday night into Wednesday morning.

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