Biggest Full Moon Tonight in Years

This from the Times Online.  Tonight is going to be a uniquely large full moon.

From The Times
December 12, 2008

Look up tonight for a spectacular treat in the sky

Biggest full moon for years enhanced by shooting stars

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.

The next closest encounter with a full moon this large will not be until November 14, 2016.

Follow this link to read the full story.

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 12th, 2008 at 11:21 am and is filed under Uncategorized, unbelieveable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Biggest Full Moon Tonight in Years”

  1. Oscar Says:
    March 12th, 2009 at 8:47 am

    I wish I would have known about this before! It would have been cool trying to photograph this.

  2. Tbone Says:
    March 12th, 2009 at 9:00 am

    Ha. Yeah, you know I actually had my tripod all setup. I was waiting out there on the rooftop for that larger than life full moon and guess what?>

    It was not anything spectacular. In fat, I had seen many a moons much larger. I think it was bad timing and the wrong hemisphere.

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