Nov 14th, 2016: Supermoon

[lumberjim]

I understand light refraction.

I meant I don't know what path it takes in my sky. I know the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, because we revolve around IT. I never learned how to predict where or when the moon would be on the horizon as it rises and sets.... I don't know if it's a regular pattern or what.

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Just cleared the trees on the hill across the street, but looks more like a Clark Kent Moon than a Supermoon.

Tell the moon to take off Clark's glasses.

[lumberjim]

[Diaphone Jim]

Garrr!
My sort-of local paper (Santa Rosa CA Press Democrat) had an article today stating "astronomers say the moon has not been this close since ...1948."
Above it says "Tonight's moon is the largest since 1948."
The moon, in fact, has been this big and this close every month since 1948 and long before.
Failing to use the term "FULL moon" makes the whole thing meaningless, which it basically is anyway.

[lumberjim]

friggin cloudy and rained here of course. jerk ass weather.

Maybe it will still look cool tonight.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Diaphone Jim

Failing to use the term "FULL moon" makes the whole thing meaningless, which it basically is anyway.

You wouldn't say that if you were a werewolf.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Diaphone Jim

Garrr!
...
The moon, in fact, has been this big and this close every month since 1948 and long before.
Failing to use the term "FULL moon" makes the whole thing meaningless, which it basically is anyway.

Sure, it's a dumb name, but if you have even a passing interest in astronomy, you should be happy that the hoi polloi are getting excited by this and going outside and looking up in the sky. The more people take an interest in this, the more likely astronomy will continue to receive funding for research.

Besides, you are wrong.

Look at this Lunar Perigee and Apogee table.

Just by way of example, in July, the closest the moon got to the Earth was 369,658 km. This month, it got as close as 356,511 km. That a difference of 13,147 km or greater than the diameter of the earth.

And that's just the closest it gets. When you look at the farthest it gets, then the difference is more dramatic. The IOTD picture above points out that there was a full moon in 2012 that coincided with apogee, and the moon was 406,364 km away from the earth during that full moon. That's a difference of 49,853 km or about 4 earth diameters farther away when compared to this month's full moon.

All that is hard to comprehend. But the picture at the top of the thread is instantly understandable.

[xoxoxoBruce]

We have another biggie coming up in December, although not quite this big.

[Gravdigr]

No apologies. It had to be done.

[Jane76]

I was quite disappointed by this, I watched it but couldn't see the difference :/

Jane

[xoxoxoBruce]

Evidently you have to see it close to the horizon to appreciate the difference, Jane. I couldn't see it until it was quite high, but it stuck me as considerably brighter.

[Diaphone Jim]

glatt:
Darned if you are not right.
I thought that the point of the exercise was the coincidence of the full moon and a close perigee.
Turns out there is a much greater variation in lunar perigees than I knew and I am not really too bad an amateur astronomer.
Supermoon indeed!
Red-faced.

[glatt]

Well, I'm glad you brought it up because I'd heard of lots of disappointment a couple years ago when the internet was saying the moon was going to be like 10 times larger or some crazy thing like that and people were annoyed when it looked exactly the same.

But this time, I saw real astronomy sites talking about how it was a big deal, so when you questioned it, I looked it up. I was glad to have been prompted to look it up. It's pretty cool.

[xoxoxoBruce]

The big moon in Philly...

[lumberjim]

It was cloudy on the 14th. When was that taken?