The Blue Moon – second of two full moons in one calendar month – will pass through the Earth’s shadow on January 31, 2018, to give us a total lunar eclipse. Totality, when the moon will be entirely inside the Earth’s dark umbral shadow, will last a bit more than one-and-a-quarter hours. The January 31 full moon is also the third in a series of three straight full moon supermoons – that is, super-close full moons. It’s the first of two Blue Moons in 2018. So it’s not just a total lunar eclipse, or a Blue Moon, or a supermoon. It’s all three … a super Blue Moon total eclipse!

Is it the first Blue Moon total eclipse in 150 years, as some social media memes are now claiming? It is … if you’re not considering the whole world, but only the Americas. More about that below.

How about supermoon total lunar eclipses? The last supermoon total lunar eclipse was in September 2015. And the last super Blue Moon total eclipse happened on December 30, 1982.

Source earthsky.org