Trending News|October 14, 2014 12:53 EDT
Blood Moon 2014 Date: Crimson Red Moon and Pumpkin Sun, Just in Time For Halloween
On night of Oct. 8, the moon turned a reddish-orange color as the Earth passed in front of it. The Blood moon could have been seen from the American, Asian, and Australian skies.
A Blood moon is a rare occurrence does not always happens on a night with a full moon. It happens when Sun, Earth and Moon get into perfect alignment, with the earth blocking sunrays reaching the Moon. Hence, the moon loses its usual silver glow and turns crimson and dark.
However, the lunar eclipse was not the only creepy heavenly occurrence of Halloween month, after the blood moon NASA scientists captured a Pumpkin Sun in the sky. "Active regions on the sun combined to look something like a jack-o-lanterns' face on Oct. 8, 2014. The active regions appear brighter because those are areas that emit more light and energy - markers of an intense and complex set of magnetic fields hovering in the sun's atmosphere, the corona," NASA's Goodard Space Flight Center said.
NASA described the star appears like a pumpkin because specific active regions are emitting more light and energy than others. They show storms and flares on the surface. Solar flares are known to be strong enough to damage satellites; however, this particular time there was no imminent danger.
Researchers and scientists have even spotted 'holes' in the sun as a result of the activity in the past.
A dark square on the sun, known as a 'coronal hole,' is an area where the solar wind is streaming out of the sun at super fast speeds.
Such holes may appear at any time of the solar cycle but they are most common during the declining phase of the cycle.
The brightest points in the images are generally at the top of the magnetic loops or arches. The images were taken by the Solar Dynamics Observatory.