A Jewel on the Flower Moon

Cloudy skies plagued some sky watchers on Sunday as May presumably’s Fleshy Flower Moon slipped via Earth’s shadow in a total lunar eclipse. In skies above Chile’s Atacama barren pickle this telephoto snapshot unexcited captured an unheard of spectacle though. Considered via thin high cirrus clouds correct earlier than totality started, a final sliver of sunlit crescent glistens cherish a hazy jewel atop the largely shadowed lunar disk. This tubby moon used to be attain perigee, the closest point in its elliptical orbit. It handed attain the center of Earth’s darkish umbral shadow all over the 90 minute long total eclipse section. Faintly suffused with sunlight scattered by the atmosphere, the umbral shadow itself gave the eclipsed moon a reddened appearance and the very dramatic neatly-liked moniker of a Blood Moon.