                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                                 2022 May 18

                         A Jewel on the Flower Moon
                  Image Credit & Copyright: Tomas Slovinsky

   Explanation: Cloudy skies plagued some sky watchers on Sunday as May's
   Full Flower Moon slipped through Earth's shadow in a total lunar
   eclipse. In skies above Chile's Atacama desert this telephoto snapshot
   still captured an awesome spectacle though. Seen through thin high
   cirrus clouds just before totality began, a last sliver of sunlit
   crescent glistens like a hazy jewel atop the mostly shadowed lunar
   disk. This full moon was near perigee, the closest point in its
   elliptical orbit. It passed near the center of Earth's dark umbral
   shadow during the 90 minute long total eclipse phase. Faintly suffused
   with sunlight scattered by the atmosphere, the umbral shadow itself
   gave the eclipsed moon a reddened appearance and the very dramatic
   popular moniker of a Blood Moon.

                     Tomorrow's picture: pixels in space
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
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                             & Michigan Tech. U.

