In Vietnam, observing the super blue moon

According to Time and Date , the super blue-red moon will reach its fullness at 8:35 a.m. on August 31, Vietnam time. The best time to observe this spectacular phenomenon will be on the evenings of August 30 and 31.

Called the super blue-red moon, because the full moon at the end of August will be the convergence of three phenomena.

A summer supermoon as seen from New York (Photo: Live Science)

First, this is the biggest supermoon of the year. According to calculations by astrophysicist Fred Espenak, a former expert at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, it is 357,344km from Earth, the closest in a series of four consecutive supermoons from July to September.

Second, it's a "blue moon," or more accurately a "calendar blue moon," the name given to the second full moon in the same month.

Third, although it is called a "blue moon", it will have a hue ranging from orange to orange-red, especially in the early evening. In some Western countries, people also call the August moon a "red moon".

The first red moon of August taken from Ho Chi Minh City. (Photo: Anh Thu)

This color is due to the angle of the Earth in summer, which causes the moon to hang low and we have to view it through a thick layer of atmosphere.

This layer of atmosphere acts as a prism to filter light, so although the moonlight still has its normal color, when it reaches the human eye, it has a color ranging from orange to orange-red.

The darker the hue, the more bad news it is because this is a sign that you are looking at the moon through a dense atmosphere of pollution due to smoke or forest fires.

To observe this beautiful blue-red supermoon, observers can take advantage of the "moon illusion" that occurs at dusk, when the new moon rises and hangs lowest in the evening. At this moment, the moon always looks larger and redder than the rest of the evening.

Thus, for Vietnamese observers, the August super blue moon will look best at dusk to early evening on August 30 and 31 because the absolute full moon falls between these two nights.

(Source: Lao Dong Newspaper)

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