North Pole Moon crossing sun video debunked as clip goes viral on Twitter

A video showing the moon taking up the whole sky before it eclipses the sun for a few seconds at the North Pole has gone viral on social media. The video has since been viewed over four million times on Twitter alone. Netizens have begun to wonder whether the natural phenomenon is real.

Before the video circulating on Twitter, it made its rounds on TikTok after being posted by user @amoskabuthi0 on September 7. The netizen claimed to have captured “one of the wonders of nature.”

In the viral clip, the moon was seen orbiting extremely close to Earth as it filled the majority of the sky prior to eclipsing the sun. It turned the entire sky pitch black for a moment as it did so.

The text on the TikTok video claimed:

“While orbiting the Earth near the Arctic Ocean at the North Pole between Russia and Canada, the Moon comes so close to the earth it looks as though it will collide with the earth.”

A few seconds into the video, the next on-screen text reads that the moon completes the cycle above “in just 30 seconds and for 5 seconds it covers the Sun” before disappearing.

The video has been viewed over 6.5 million times on TikTok and has accumulated nearly 600,000 likes while writing this article.

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Was the video of the moon eclipsing the sun at the North Pole real?

The video is not real. It was made by a CGI and animation artist @aleksey_nz. The video was initially posted on May 17, when it garnered over 32.9 million views on TikTok. The creator often animates space travel and sky videos and posts them on his TikTok account, where he has amassed nearly two million followers.

Proving that the video is not real, @amoskabuthi0 took to TikTok, claiming it was not filmed at the North Pole. Viewers would expect to see the land covered in snow and ice. However, the landscape appeared dry and grassy.

Newsweek reported that the closest the moon can be to Earth is 360,000 kilometers, which would mean that the moon would appear much smaller than what is being suggested in the video.

The viral clip also showcases the various facets of the moon at the North Pole, which would be impossible to view in one go as the moon takes roughly 27 days to complete a single orbit.

Meteorologist Rebecca Barry from Max Defender 8 also stated that when the moon appears in front of the sun, you cannot see the moon at all in the sky. The only way to see the moon in such a situation would be if the sun’s light reflected off the surface and back to the viewers. Barry added- “At that angle, the moon can't be illuminated.”

Prior to the video going viral, the original artist also created a video showcasing a UFO flying around the moon.