Today, May 26, 2021, the Moon approached the Earth at its closest distance this year: this phenomenon, called a supermoon, was captured by the Russian spacecraft Aist-2D. In addition, today some inhabitants of the Earth could observe a total lunar eclipse.

Click to enlarge / Photo “Roskosmos”

As noted by the Moscow Planetarium, the supermoon is the moment when the full moon approaches the Earth at a distance of closer than 362 km. This event was captured by the Aist-000D satellite, which is located at an altitude of approximately 2 km from the surface of our planet.

Here and below the images of the Moscow Planetarium

The published photograph clearly shows the lunar surface. Such a high-quality image was obtained using high-resolution optoelectronic equipment developed for observing the Earth’s surface. Note that the named spacecraft was launched on April 28, 2016 by the Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket as part of the first launch campaign from the Vostochny cosmodrome.

Today there was another event associated with the Moon – a total eclipse. The Moscow Planetarium reports that the Moon, during its orbit at 14:19 Moscow time, plunged into the northern part of the earth’s shadow at 1,0095 lunar diameter. The total phase of the lunar eclipse lasted only 14,5 minutes. The moon during the eclipse was in the constellation Scorpio above its main star Antares.