Alignment of the stars: blood moon eclipse and Mars flyover

The heavens are treating astronomers of a show of a variety.

This heavenly co-incident festival presents an eclipsed "blood moon" that shares a sky with the Sun this morning; Mars arriving at its closest point for the next 17 years;

BLOOD MOON FOR BREAKFAST

The event March of yesterday would be followed this morning by another rare event – an eclipsed moon that could be visible on a horizon while the Sun was rising on the sky.

This show, called selenélion, was to take place a few minutes after 8 o'clock in the morning, and could be better seen in the southern regions, provided their sky is clear.

Being able to see the Sun and a lunar eclipse at once could be considered impossible, since these events usually occur when the Sun, the Earth and the Moon were all in a straight line.

But the bending of the rays of light caused by our atmosphere made it possible to see the selenelion Since the total lunar eclipse was in progress at the time of the moon and the sunrise, there were few points of view on our planet to experience it – but New Zealand was happily one of them.

In our case, Otago and Southland stood to have the best insight, although, even in Auckland, the eclipse would still be partial as the moon disappeared under the horizon.

For those of Whanganui in Wellington, there would be just a slight chance to see the moon totally overshadowed by the sun over the horizon

Invercargill, there would be five minutes between sunrise at 8:12 and the moon shortly after, the moon being entirely in the shadow of the Earth. Dunedin, the interval would be reduced to four minutes; in Christchurch, three minutes

During the total eclipse – which should begin at 7:30 in the morning – the moon would appear much paler than usual, and stained between dark brown and blood red

. Called "moon of blood" – an event wrapped up in the old superstition – was due to the sunlight that was crossing the Earth's atmosphere and reaching the moon.

The red light had a better chance of doing it for the same reason that the sky was blue – shorter wavelengths were dispersed more efficiently by the molecules of our atmosphere.

"Although there is a visible lunar eclipse of New Zealand every two years, on average, being in the right place to see a celestial peculiarity as a selenelion is much less common, and very little people have seen one, "said Dr. Duncan Steel of the Space Science Center of Otago Technology

MARS MARVEL

Yesterday marked what astronomers call" opposition " of Mars – something that happened every two years, when the Earth aligned itself directly between Mars and the Sun.

This phenomenon could be explained by the elliptical or oval orbits that Earth and Mars followed by the Sun.

The fact that our planet was closer than Mars meant that the Earth was accelerating its orbit faster, making two trips around the Sun at the same time, taken for March 1965 to make a single circuit [19659002] Finally, the two planet They aligned – but sometimes the match turned out to be a lot more special.

When Mars happened to be closest to the Sun in its orbit, which occurred in a few weeks of opposition, a "peribelic opposition" occurred, and Mars appeared even larger and brighter [19659002Sucheventsoccurredonlyevery17years-andsomebroughtusclosertogetherthanothers

. being the closest opposition of the last 60,000 years.

The conditions of this year were not quite so extraordinary, but Mars would still be only 4% smaller than this show

. to be at perihelian opposition, in 2035, humans would have walked on the surface of Mars.

Mars would not be at its closest to Earth until around 3:50 pm on Tuesday.

At that time, we would be estimated that 57.6 million km, which was much Later, last month, Mars was still 70.8 million kilometers away from us.

Interestingly, the event occurred when scientists discovered the first large volume of liquid water. on the Red Planet

A PLANETARY BANQUET

People might also have noticed five planets – Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and Mars – all together in the evening sky lately.

"It's a coincidence," In the first place, if we consider Saturn and Jupiter, Saturn goes around the sun every 30 years, while Jupiter bypasses it every 12 years, so for a good part of time they are on the opposite sides of the sky, and never seen at the same time.

"It just happens that Jupiter is overtaking Saturn, so that they are both closer together in the sky at the present time."

Added to this were the unusual cameos of Mercury and Venus – planets that were more generally "Most of the time, they are obscured by brightness, so again, it is relatively unusual to have them both in the west sky where people can see them both. "

Mercury was no longer as visible as it had been, but Venus could still be seen more clearly than normal.

"If this happened in the sky before dawn, we would not be careful, but when they are all there in the evening sky, people are more likely to notice it."

Christie said that the combination of all these events was interesting, but nevertheless predictable according to the laws of astronomy. movement of pure watchmaking. "