Today, Monday, November 14th, is the night of the November "supermoon". November supermoon is the name of the point of the lunar cycle where the moon is closest to the Earth. This supermoon is especially important because it's the closest the moon has been to the Earth in 69 years. The moon won't come this close again until November 25, 2034. The distance between the moon and the Earth changes because the moon does not orbit in a perfect circle,but an ellipse, because of the Earth's gravitational pull. When the full moon is at its closest, it can appear up to fourteen percent bigger and thirty percent brighter in the sky. Tonight's moon will be approximately 221, 524 miles from Earth.
The author was trying to convey information about the moon and lunar cycle and tying it too this really cool concept that will be affecting us. I find this concept really cool and fascinating, since I normally don't pay that much attention to the moon, but I definitely noticed it tonight. I think it's sad how underrated the stars and outerspace is nowadays. This can be synthesized to the budget cuts currently made in NASA and the declining interest in outerspace.
http://www.space.com/34714-supermoon-science-nasa-explains-closest-full-moon.html
I agree this is fascinating and I too took advantage of this time in history where I was able to view the moon at it's closest in many years.
ReplyDeleteit's so cool that this was the closest it's been in 69 years and the closest it will be until 2034. I really didn't know that before reading this.
ReplyDelete