Friday, December 12, 2008

Larger full moon!

I got up early this morning, noticed the full moon through the top window of our front door with some nice cloud pattern around it, so I grabbed my Kodak Easyshare and snapped the following shot:
Well, I was a little disappointed because I was not able to capture the cloud pattern I saw. What I did not realize at the time was that moon happens to be a special one as this one shown in Drudge Report:

Here's what Times Online reports:

If the full moon tonight looks unusually large, it is not your imagination – it is the biggest and brightest full moon to be seen for 15 years.

Each month the Moon makes a full orbit around the Earth in a slightly oval-shaped path, and tonight it will swing by the Earth at its closest distance, or perigee. It will pass by 356,613km (221,595 miles) away, which is about 28,000km closer than average.

The unusual feature of tonight is that the perigee also coincides with a full moon, which will make it appear 14 per cent bigger and some 30 per cent brighter than most full moons this year – so long as the clouds hold off from blocking the view.

And an illustration:

We always learn something new each day, even when it's not at all preplanned!

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