Wayne State Planetarium hosts supermoon eclipse viewing

Wayne State University Planetarium hosted a highly successful viewing party for the Supermoon Eclipse, which took place on Sunday, September 27. About 150 people of the Wayne State community and members of the general public showed up at the planetarium to learn about and view the eclipse.

Faculty, staff and students from the Department of Physics and Astronomy set up telescopes on the lawn outside Old Main, giving those in attendance the opportunity to see it close up. Although the evening started off cloudy, remarkably, the skies cleared just in time for the start of the eclipse, giving about one and a half hours of clear viewing of the moon before the clouds came over again. The picture on the right was captured by Wayne State professor Peter Hoffmann during the beginning of the eclipse.

A lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth's shadow blocks light from the Sun from reaching the Moon. Sunday's event was a rare type of lunar eclipse dubbed a supermoon eclipse, because it occurred when the Moon was in the closest part of its orbit to Earth, meaning that it appears slightly larger in the sky. The next supermoon eclipse is not until 2033!