May 2021 lunar eclipse
A total lunar eclipse occurred on 26 May 2021. A lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon moves into the Earth's shadow. This can occur only when the Sun, Earth, and Moon are exactly or very closely aligned (in syzygy) with Earth between the other two, which can only happen at a full moon. The eclipsed moon appeared as a faint red disk in the sky due to a small amount of light being refracted through the Earth's atmosphere; this appearance gives a lunar eclipse its nickname of a Blood Moon.
| Total eclipse | |||||||||||||||||
Mountain View, California at 11:23 UTC, end of totality | |||||||||||||||||
| Date | 26 May 2021 | ||||||||||||||||
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| Gamma | 0.4774 | ||||||||||||||||
| Magnitude | 1.0095 | ||||||||||||||||
| Saros cycle | 121 (55 of 82) | ||||||||||||||||
| Totality | 14 minutes, 30 seconds | ||||||||||||||||
| Partiality | 187 minutes, 25 seconds | ||||||||||||||||
| Penumbral | 302 minutes, 2 seconds | ||||||||||||||||
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It was the first total lunar eclipse since the January 2019 lunar eclipse, and the first in a series of an almost tetrad (with four consecutive total or deep partial lunar eclipses). The next total eclipse occurred in May 2022. The event took place near lunar perigee; as a result, this supermoon was referred to in US media coverage as a "super flower blood moon", and elsewhere as a "super blood moon".
It was followed two weeks later by an annular solar eclipse on 10 June 2021 over the northern polar regions of Earth.
This lunar eclipse was the first of an almost tetrad, the others being 19 Nov 2021 (P), 16 May 2022 (T) and 08 Nov 2022 (T).