Supermoon: Closest Full Moon to Earth Since 1948
A supermoon is the coincidence of a full moon or a new moon with the closest approach the Moon makes to the Earth on its elliptical orbit, resulting in the largest apparent size of the lunar disk as seen from Earth. This one is

Blood Moon: Turns Red During Total Lunar Eclipse
The first total lunar eclipse in more than two years graced the skies on Monday, April 14th through early morning of Tuesday April 15th.

During a lunar eclipse, the moon passes behind our planet so that Earth blocks the sun's rays from striking the moon. Due to the moon's tilted orbit around the Earth, one doesn't occur every month. And total eclipses usually happen once every few years, though there are sometimes more than one in a year.

Why does the moon turn orange-red during a lunar eclipse? During an eclipse, sunlight shining through the ring of Earth's dusty atmosphere is bent, or refracted, toward the red part of the spectrum and cast onto the moon's surface. As a result, expect to see the lunar disk go from a dark gray color during the partial phase of the eclipse to a reddish-orange color during totality. The same effect is at work when the sun turns red at sunset.

The moon's color during totality can vary considerably depending on the amount of dust in the Earth's atmosphere at the time. Active volcanoes spewing tons of ash into the upper atmosphere, for instance, can trigger blood-red eclipses.

No one can predict exactly what color we'll see before each eclipse.

Please click on the photos in the gallery to view the various phases of the eclipse.