When you’re describing a rare astronomical event on television – one we won’t see again until 2032 – it’s good to have a picture to hand to bring the news report to life and illustrate exactly what it is you’re talking about.
Yet when BBC News were unable to show an image of the rare blue supermoon (which isn’t actually blue, but rather the second full moon in a calendar month which is within 360,000km of Earth), presenter Maryam Moshiri was forced to improvise, using her hands to give viewers an idea of the shape of a moon and exactly what it looked like.
“I’m so sorry I don’t have pictures to show you. It looked a little bit like this, here you go, supermoon,” she said on Wednesday afternoon, bridging her hands together in a curve to form a circle.
It came after a technical issue saw images appearing to show the impact of Hurricane Idalia in Florida pop up on screen, instead of the moon which appears bigger and brighter than usual during the rare event.
Always quick to spot a BBC News meme in the making, the hilarious moment was captured and shared on Twitter/X by TV critic Scott Bryan amongst others – and the reactions soon followed:
Thankfully, Ms Moshiri took the mishap in jest, issuing a series of replies to those who spotted the slip-up by saying she was “so sorry to all the moon lovers [out] there” and that she “should have taken a photo [last night] and shown that to the camera”.
“I think it’s a pretty good impression given what I had to play with,” she added.
We’d be inclined to agree – it was out of this world, in fact.
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