Bloomfield Hills — It sounds like a very long name for a team cartoon characters, and it only happens once in a blue moon. It’s…
Bloomfield Hills — It sounds like a very long name for a team cartoon characters, and it only happens once in a blue moon.
It’s a super blood wolf moon —a combination total lunar eclipse and supermoon, a full moon that’s so close to Earth it looks bigger and brighter than usual.
“It will be about 30 percent brighter than usual, but only about 6-7 percent bigger than usual,” said Michael Narlock, head of astronomy and the exhibits and web coordinator at the Cranbrook Institute of Science in Bloomfield Hills. “And it just so happens that this particular supermoon Sunday will happen at the same time we’re going to have a total lunar eclipse.”
During totality, the moon will look red because of sunlight scattering off Earth’s atmosphere.
“So the moon is going to be a little bit bigger, a little bit brighter and then all of sudden, as it passes through the Earth’s atmosphere, it’s going to turn a blood red.”
In January, the full moon is also sometimes known as the wolf moon or great spirit moon.
Narlock said the phenomenon isn’t rare, but it doesn’t happen very often, either.
“We get 3-4 supermoons a year and total lunar eclipses happen about 5 percent of the time we have a full moon, so about 1 percent of every full moon is a super blood moon.
