AN INCREDIBLE photo shows the moment a rocket is launched into space with a massive glowing Hunter’s Moon in the background.
The SpaceX rocket was blasted off into orbit on a satellite mission at the same time the stunning gold moon was in the sky.
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Falcon 9 rocket was on its record 14th mission lifting off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Saturday at 7:05 p.m. EDT (00.05 BST).
The rocket’s first stage returned to Earth and landed on SpaceX’s A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship about 8.5 minutes after launch.
The ship was located in the Atlantic Ocean, a few hundred miles off the Florida coast, Space.com reports.
It previously helped to launch the GPS III-3 and Turksat 5A satellites, the Transporter-2 rideshare mission and 10 Starlink missions.
And the launch just happened to coincide with the time October’s first full moon would reach peak illumination, according to the US Naval Observatory’s Astronomical Applications Department.
As the moon begins to sink into the horizon on Sunday it appears bigger and brighter than usual- a so-called “moon illusion.”
The Hunter’s Moon is the first full moon since the Harvest Moon- both signifying the beginning of the new season.
According to The Farmer’s Almanac, it is called the Hunter’s Moon as it represents a time where late autumn days were spent preparing food and fuel for the cold winter.
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It’s a time when farmers would traditionally prepare for the cold days ahead by using the moon’s light to hunt animals for winter.
The Almanac states: “Animals are beginning to fatten up ahead of winter, and since the farmers had recently cleaned out their fields under the harvest moon, hunters could easily see the deer and other animals that had come out to root through the remaining scraps.”
The Harvest moon which usually occurs in September signifies the beginning of autumn.
It means that it’s the peak of the harvest season and farmers can use the moon’s light to work late at night.
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