Rare supermoon lunar eclipse coming Sunday

WABC logo
Monday, September 28, 2015
The supermoon appears yellow as the sky darkens over Edgartown, Mass., Sunday, Aug. 10, 2014, on the island of Martha's Vineyard.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Make sure to look up in the night's sky tonight because a rare supermoon lunar eclipse is coming your way.

The cosmic event will take place on Sept. 27, when both a supermoon and a lunar eclipse will be happening at the same time. This will be the first time that a supermoon lunar eclipse has happened since 1982.

NASA explained in a video how a supermoon lunar eclipse occurs.

"Take a full moon, add the closest approach the moon makes to the earth on its elliptical orbit, which results in it looking 14 percent larger in diameter. That's a supermoon," the narrator in the video says. "Combine this with a lunar eclipse, when the moon passes directly behind the earth into its shadow, giving it a red tint. Now you have a supermoon lunar eclipse."

PHOTOS: March 2015 Solar Eclipse

The partial lunar eclipse is set to begin at 9:07 p.m. ET Sunday and will be visible to most people in the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, according to EarthSky.org. The total eclipse will begin around 10:11 p.m. ET.

If you're in a cloudy area and can't get a glimpse, you can still watch it in real-time on NASA's live-stream. The feed will offer views from around the country, including Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles and the Adler Planetarium in Chicago.

Make sure you catch this supermoon lunar eclipse, as the next one won't happen until 2033.

Copyright © 2024 WABC-TV. All Rights Reserved.