Early Friday morning, most of North America was treated to a rare astronomical sighting: the longest partial lunar eclipse of the last 580 years. It was actually a combination Frost Moon-Beaver Moon-Partial Lunar Eclipse with a reddish-brown Blood Moon glow to it, if we're being unscientifcally exact.
If you couldn't get ahold of a telescope from your local library, or you couldn't quite bring yourself to stay up or wake up early enough to see the moon at its peak eclipse state around 4 a.m., you can check out a few photos and videos of the moon hovering above our city.
The partial lunar eclipse lasted a total of three hours, 28 minutes and 23 seconds, making it the longest one since 1440 (having said that, the total lunar eclipse in 2018 lasted about 10 minutes longer, not that this is a competition or anything). It was also really, really close to being a total eclipse—at its peak, between 97-99% of the moon was covered in darkness in the Earth's umbra, so it's unlikely you would have even been able to tell it wasn't a full eclipse.
If these photos above aren't quite doing enough to make up for you missing seeing the partial eclipse with your own eyes, you can vibe out with a six+ hour livestream of the event — feel free to howl or grunt at the beaver moon below.
While there are a few more partial and total eclipses on tap over the next year, most of them won't be visible to anyone in North America. The next time anyone in NYC will have a chance to witness a total lunar eclipse will be on May 15th, 2022, so don't forget to turn around, bright eyes.
