supermoon ontario photos

Rare supermoon lights up night sky over Ontario and the photos are astounding

The first appearance in a full supermoon double-header graced the skies over Ontario on Tuesday night, and stargazers were treated to quite the show for part one of August's rare blue supermoon.

August will bring two full supermoons to the night sky, a rare occurrence that will not occur again until 2037. Luckily for sky-watching shutterbugs, it was a mostly cloudless night over Canada's largest city, making for unobstructed views of a massive supermoon.

Tuesday's sturgeon supermoon saw the celestial body orbit at just 357,530 kilometres from Earth, or around 30,000 kilometres closer than its typical orbit of 384,400 kilometres.

The term 'blue moon' is a bit of a misnomer, having nothing to do with the hue of the Moon and instead describing an extra full moon within a season or calendar month. Instead of any blue tones, the cratered sphere took on a menacing orange cast on Tuesday night before eventually evening out on the colour wheel as it rose higher over the horizon.

Capturing images of the glowing natural satellite is easier than ever before thanks to rapid advances in phone camera technology, the type of photos once reserved for photographers wielding massive professional telephoto lenses.

Some smartphones even offer a "moon mode" designed specifically for shooting photos of the celestial body.

If you missed the first full supermoon event in August, you still have another chance just a few weeks away.

A second full supermoon will illuminate the night sky on Aug. 30, and this one will be even closer than the first, at 357,344 kilometres from the Earth.

This month's double-header will mark the only blue supermoon event of the 2020s, and it will be a full 14 years before two full supermoons rise in the same calendar month again in 2037.

Lead photo by

@digigraphs/Instagram


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