The end of the world, fourth instalment

The closest full moon of the year went into total eclipse, and because it was the fourth total lunar eclipse in a row a number of people had been told it meant the end of the world.

Four consecutive total eclipses with no partial ones between them is called a tetrad, and it happens in clusters — there were eight tetrads in the twentieth century and there are eight this century. The Moon was about 356,900 kilometres away that night, close to the nearest it gets, which is why the disc looked large as well as red.