Supermoon

Fantastic dark!

Reach out and grab that moon !

Fantastic photo! You can clearly see the rabbit pounding the mochi on the moon!

Makes me want to howl!

The signs of a hare (hair-raising) year.

Someone's not impressed...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5-i-I2DUa0

XKCD is not impressed either:

http://xkcd.com/1394/

Cool photo JT

Especially in the thumbnail on the front page, the lights on the ferris wheel make it look like creepy evil centipedes coming over a hill or something. Maybe not what the photographer was going for, but I love it.

Nice shot. Dark, and beautiful.

It looked really large last night!

The astronomical event occurs when the moon is closest to the Earth in its orbit, making it appear much larger and brighter than usual.

Not quite.

The Moon is closest to Earth, ie. at perigee, approximately every 27 days and what people are calling a "supermoon" does not occur every 27 days. A "supermoon" occurs when the moon is full within 24 hours of it being at perigee.

Astronomers use the term "perigee-syzygy" to describe the event. Syzygy is when the Sun, Moon, and Earth are aligned.

The term "supermoon" was coined by astrologers. Astrology is a psedo-science, based on ignorance and superstition.

Following the typhoon as it did, it struck me as being quite large and beautiful late last night when walking my dog. A lovely night.

So until when do we have the perigee-syzygy, Monaka?

astronomical, astrological, oh well. It's a good photo.

"Nessie" wrote:

So until when do we have the perigee-syzygy, Monaka?

Technically, perigee occurred at 17:44 UTC on Aug. 10 (and the Moon was 356,896 km away) and the full Moon (syzygy) occurred 25 minutes later at 18:09 UTC.

So, you could say the "supermoon" occurred at 18:09 UTC on Aug. 10. If you looked at the Moon 12 hours before or after that time, then you pretty much see the same thing.

The next perigee-syzygy occurs on Sept. 9, 2014 at 01:38 UTC.

Anyway, enjoy the peak of the Perseid meteor shower tonight (Aug. 11-12)!