‘Visually spectacular’ night ahead as supermoon, lunar eclipse light up the sky

WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - Tuesday night and Wednesday morning Americans can look to the skies and witness a rare event. A so-called supermoon and a lunar eclipse will be visible to much of the U.S. Experts at NASA say events like this do not happen often, so take it in while you can.

“We always love for people to have a reason to go outside and look up, and this is just visually spectacular,” said Ernie Wright, a science visualizer at NASA.

Wright says it is the closest full moon of the year, giving it the supermoon designation. Supermoons are not uncommon, but coinciding with a total lunar eclipse, which is when the moon passes into the earth’s shadow, is a once or twice a decade experience according to Wright.

“You think, ‘Oh it’s the moon I’ll just go out and look at it.’ But then you see this alignment of the earth, the moon, and the sun and think about it for a second, you go, ‘Wow! That’s cool!’”

Wright says the mountain and pacific time zones will get the full experience of a total eclipse early Wednesday morning, but he says just about everyone in the U.S. will be able to see a partial eclipse while enjoying the supermoon. Wright says he likes these moments when he can try to convince people to think bigger.

“It sort of takes you out of your daily problems and whatever things you saw on TV or social media that upsets you, and makes you look at the bigger picture,” said Wright.

Wright says the best time to get a view of the eclipse is going to be early Wednesday morning before sunrise. And if you want to learn more about all this moon madness, you can visit moon.nasa.gov.

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