Take a Look at the Rare 'Super Flower Blood Moon' From Around the World
Visible for about 14 minutes to skywatchers in Asia, Australia, most of the U.S. and South America.
In the early morning hours on Wednesday, May 26, the Super Flower Blood Moon — a cosmic phenomenon resulting from a simultaneous supermoon and lunar eclipse — captivated the night sky with a stunning orange-red glow for roughly 14 minutes.
The moon appeared roughly seven percent larger than its normal size as it slipped into Earth’s shadow, though the average onlooker wouldn’t have noticed the microscopic size difference.
According to NASA, a blood moon occurs during a total lunar eclipse, where the Earth lines up directly between the Moon and the Sun, hiding the Moon from any sunlight and providing the natural satellite with its radiant appearance. The Super Flower Blood Moon was the first total lunar eclipse in almost two and a half years.
The May “Flower Moon” was given its name for the abundance of blooming flowers in the Northern Hemisphere during springtime. The May 26 moon was the second of two supermoons — which occur when the Moon moves with 90 percent of pedigree to Earth — to happen in 2021.
Photographers in all parts of the world captured stunning imagery of the cosmic phenomenon, which was visible to stargazers in Australia, Asia and a majority of the U.S. and South America. In the gallery above, take a look at select images taken in Hong Kong, Turkey, Indonesia, Australia, California and several other locations on the “night” side of the planet.
Elsewhere in orbit, Swatch debuted a new Bioceramic watch collection celebrating NASA’s interstellar innovation.
