Take a look at these stunning pictures of last night’s super blue blood moon

It was bigger and brighter than usual, and for some there was a lunar eclipse.

Published Feb 1, 2018

The blue super moon rises over Hull (Danny Lawson/PA)

Wednesday night was a triple whammy of celestial events, with a super blue blood moon visible to keen astronomers who were in the right place to see it.

Here are some of the best pictures from the special evening.

Large bright moon shines down over lit-up Kelpies — The supermoon above the Kelpies in Central Scotland (Andrew Milligan/PA)

Giant moon silhouetted by passenger jet — A plane crosses the Blue Moon above Liverpool (Peter Byrne/PA)

Large white moon rises above the hill Glastonbury Tor sits on — A Blue Moon rises behind Glastonbury Tor, Somerset (Ben Birchall/PA)

A lunar eclipse is when the sun, moon and Earth are aligned, and the moon passes into the Earth’s shadow.

The moon rises over the London skyline (Kirsty O'Connor/PA) — The moon rises over the London skyline (Kirsty O’Connor/PA)

Close up picture of the moon — This close-up photo was taken early on Wednesday evening from Taunton in Somerset (@Wayguns/PA)

Incredibly bright moon above a stately home — The Blue Moon rises over Bolsover Castle in Derbyshire (Aaron Chown/PA)

A bright white moon shines above erupting volcano — The super blue blood moon as seen from below the Mayon volcano mid-eruption in the Philippines (Bullit Marquez/AP)

When the lunar eclipse was in full swing and the moon was in the Earth’s shadow, the sunlight reaching past the Earth and illuminating the moon has passed through the Earth’s atmosphere.

The blue parts of this light were more likely to be scattered by the atmosphere, leaving more red and orange light to fall on the moon.

A super blue blood moon rises behind the Parthenon temple on the Acropolis of Athens, Greece (Petros Giannakouris/PA) — The moon rises behind the Parthenon temple on the Acropolis of Athens, Greece (Petros Giannakouris/PA)

“You may well have noticed that early on in the evening while the moon was still low in the sky, it was very clearly yellow,” said Dr Gregory Brown, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich. “This yellow colour is caused by our atmosphere scattering blue light away from the moon.

“This is also the reason why the sky appears blue, as blue light is scattered away from the sun (making it yellower) and scattered towards the observer from elsewhere in the sky. In big cities with high pollution, this effect can be even worse.”