Super Blue Blood Moon

[Thorin]

In the early morning, the moon is going to pass through the Earth's shadow.  It's a lunar eclipse.  But it's not just any lunar eclipse, there are several things coming together at once.

The moon will be almost at it's perigee, closest to the Earth in it's orbit, so it will look a little bigger.  For this, we call it a super moon.

The moon will be a full moon for the second time in the month.  For this, we call it a blue moon (yes, I know, there's two types of blue moon, this is the monthly blue moon, not the seasonal blue moon).

The moon will be fully eclipsed and the sunlight streaming through Earth's atmosphere will scatter such that mostly reddish light will make it through to the moon.  For this, we call it a blood moon (the kids have been making Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild jokes about blood moons all evening).

Put it all together and it's a Super Blue Blood Moon.  And it starts at 5:51am and ends at 7:07am Jan 31st, so we've got our alarms set for 6am tomorrow morning so that we can get up and see if it's visible.  It'll be at about 270?, pretty much due west, and about 20? above the horizon.  I hope there aren't any clouds out.

[Thorin]

My youngest convinced me to get up at 6am to view it, so I took some pictures with my phone. Attached is the best one (not great). We also found some binoculars, and it's really cool to look at with a bit of magnification. Also it's bloody cold outside to stand and look at the moon!

[Mr. Analog]

That's badass!

Reminds me of Tekkit haha

[Thorin]

Yeah, it was cool to witness something that won't happen again for 19 years.  I mean, there'll be lots of lunar eclipses (two per year usually), but a total eclipse of the second full moon of the month?  Next one's in 2037.

[Melbosa]

Nice

[Darren Dirt]

My youngest convinced me to get up at 6am to view it, so I took some pictures with my phone. Attached is the best one (not great). We also found some binoculars, and it's really cool to look at with a bit of magnification. Also it's bloody cold outside to stand and look at the moon!

Nicer photo than what I tried to capture last night about 9pm on my 4 year old cell phone camera. Although at the time I stood shivering holding up my phone trying to get a decent shot it actually LOOKED a little bit blue to my naked eye! Not even joking! Until it faded behind the cloud cover for the rest of the night Photo is so fuzzy and tiny and terrible I won't even share it.