Video of a giant moon passing through the Arctic during an eclipse goes viral; it’s real?
A 30-second video purportedly showing the Moon approaching the Arctic, between Russia and Canada, and blotting out the Sun for about 5 seconds has gone viral on social media after the supermoon and “Blood Moon” eclipse phenomena took hold. been recorded this week.
The Olhar Digital report spoke with astronomer Marcelo Zurita, president of the Paraiba Association of Astronomy – APA; member of SAB – Brazilian Astronomical Society; technical director of Bramon – Brazilian Meteor Observation Network – and regional coordinator (Northeast) of Asteroid Day Brazil, who explained the “absurd hypothesis”.
“This video, clearly fake, was produced by a computer graphics artist and posted on his social media as an animation. The problem was when someone decided to take advantage of his art and republish the material with a misleading text, indicating that the footage would have been made in the Arctic, between Russia and Canada”, said Zurita.
The artist in question is the owner of the @alekset__nz profile on TikTok. The video had over 20.4 million views, 2.5 million likes and 32,600 comments on his post.
“Unfortunately the fake post went viral more than the original art. I don’t know if this was the artist’s inspiration, but it reminded me a lot of a video from 2013, which shows how we would see the Moon if it was at the same distance from the International Space Station. Evidently, this is just an absurd hypothesis”, says the astronomer who is a columnist for Olhar Digital.
Remember the video in question:
“Evidently, this is just an absurd hypothesis, as any object orbiting at that altitude suffers aerodynamic drag and, without maneuvers for orbital correction – as with the ISS –, in a few days, the Moon would collide with the Earth. And that would not be a good thing”, explains Marcelo Zurita.
