Norwegians who stayed up very late Sunday or woke up very early on Monday were rewarded with what astronomers were calling a “super lunar eclipse” during the night. The brilliant full moon from the evening before was completely overshadowed by the earth.
The viewing was particularly good in Norway and for observers, the moon all but disappeared around 5am. “We haven’t seen anything like this in Norway since 1964 and it will be a long time until the next time,” astronomer Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard told news bureau NTB.
The last “super lunar eclipse” occurred in 1982 and the next one will be in 2033, reported state broadcaster NRK. Viewing of the one in 1982, however, wasn’t as dramatic in Norway as the one during the night.
An eclipse occurs when the earth is positioned between the sun and the moon in such a way that the earth blocks the sun’s light from illuminating the moon. The weekend’s full moon, meanwhile, looked like a huge spotlight in the sky over much of Scandinavia, also in the far south of Sweden, after the weather had cleared following weeks of rain.
newsinenglish.no staff
