2024-09-18 05:18:15
There were two celestial events during the night: amateur astronomers were able to enjoy a supermoon and a partial lunar eclipse.
Fans of special astronomical events had something to look forward to that night. There was not only a full moon, but it also appeared particularly bright and large due to its short distance from the Earth. Astronomers call this a supermoon.
As if that wasn’t spectacular enough, there was another fascinating spectacle that night: a partial lunar eclipse. This happens when the moon enters the Earth’s shadow and is partially darkened.
“The natural phenomenon begins at 2:39 a.m., when the moon moves into the Earth’s penumbra,” said Björn Voss, director of the Hamburg Planetarium. However, this change is initially barely perceptible to our eyes. “Our satellite only reaches the umbra at 4:12 a.m.,” said Voss.
Because only 9.1 percent of the moon is obscured, the rest of the moon’s disk looks more like it is covered by a gray veil. According to Voss, the moon left the Earth’s umbra again at 5:17 a.m. and finally the penumbra at 6:49 a.m.
Anyone who missed the event this morning will have to wait until March next year when the next partial lunar eclipse will take place. But it will be even more spectacular in a year, more precisely on September 7, 2025, when the next total lunar eclipse will be visible.
According to the Hamburg Planetarium, the full moon in September has different names. “On the one hand, it is called the harvest moon, which alludes to the beginning of the harvest season, and on the other hand, it is called the autumn moon,” it says. The latter indicates the upcoming change of seasons. The so-called equinox on September 22 marks the astronomical beginning of autumn in the northern hemisphere.