Monday, March 21, 2011

Super Moon

Did you see the "Super Moon" Saturday evening? I missed it due to a little thing called cloud coverage. But I've heard from others who saw it, and it seems to have lived up to its name.

The "Super Moon" is when the full moon appears in our sky at its perigee, its closest point to the earth in its orbit. Because the moon's orbit around the earth is not a perfect circle, there are times when it is furthest from the earth (apogee) and times it is closest to the earth (perigee). This month, at its closest point, it also happened to be a full moon, which only happens every 30 years or so.

So on Saturday night, the moon appeared to be about 14% larger than normal.

Super cool

2 comments:

Kim Zuch said...

I saw it the morning before it's status as "supermoon" and it looked pretty huge. That evening we had cloud cover too but it cleared up. I woke up at 2 a.m. to a very bright bedroom with it shining in the window!

Kim Zuch said...
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