Blood supermoon eclipse coming to Lowcountry sky on Sunday

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Supermoon over Harbor Island. Photo courtesy Phil Heim

The “super blood wolf moon eclipse” is coming to a sky near you this weekend.

On Sunday evening, the moon will turn red for a short period and things might just seem a little weird, but they actually couldn’t be more normal. We’ve seen the moon do this twice in just the last twelve months, after all.

A spectacular ‘super moon’ combined with a total lunar eclipse will rise over the U.S. just before midnight on January 20th, bringing a series of strange optical effects, according to NASA. The hour-long full eclipse will be visible across the entirety of North America that night, a period during which it will look red.

“It’s the first full moon of 2019 and the first lunar eclipse of 2019. Plus, it’s the year’s first super moon, meaning the moon is nearly at its closest to Earth for this month, as the eclipse takes place,” says EarthSky.org.

This type of eclipse happens when the moon passes fully into the shadow of Earth.

With the lack of ground light in our area, Beaufort is always the perfect spot to stare at the sky. We have no doubt that this is going to look spectacular and we cannot wait to see what our talented group of area photographers capture on the night of January 20th.

Let’s just hope things don’t get too weird.

The eclipse starts at 9:36pm on Sunday night and reaches a full lunar eclipse at 12:12am.