More moon news: Friday night's full moon is going to be BIG. Too bad a glob of snow, sleet, and rain will be traveling across the east central states like Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina,West Virginia, and Virginia.
This upcoming full moon is known as the Perigee Moon, the "biggest" of 2010. Of course we all know that the moon can't be bigger at some times than at other times. Don't we? Kepler told us so.
So does www.spaceweather.com, one of my favorite sites. It explains that the orbit of the moon around the sun is an ellipsis, so that it is indeed closer to the earth at one point in its orbit. That point comes Friday night.
Here is the diagram spaceweather provides a link to:
And here is an image that shows how much "bigger" the moon looks in its perigee compared to its apogee:
Image credit: Credit & Copyright: Anthony Ayiomamitis. Clicking on his name sends you to an out-of-this-world Web site.
The next post will ask the question: How did you like the first decade of the Y2K Millennium?
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