Tomorrow night presents a rare show for earthlings: an extreme full moon.
According to NASA, our moon will be a mega-perigee moon, the biggest and brightest in 20 years. No, it hasn’t grown; here’s how NASA explains it:
Full Moons vary in size because of the oval shape of the Moon's orbit. It is an ellipse with one side (perigee) about 50,000 km closer to Earth than the other (apogee): diagram. Nearby perigee moons are about 14% bigger and 30% brighter than lesser moons that occur on the apogee side of the Moon's orbit.
NASA demonstrates it on YouTube. That’s worth a look. The video suggests that to get the full effect, watch it come up over the horizon where trees and buildings influence how we perceive it.
I think I’ll go outside on my patio and howl at it.
Vernal Equinox
The very next evening is the Spring Equinox: March 20, 7:21 EDT, 4:21 PDT, 23:21 UTC, at which time the sun returns to the Northern Hemisphere. It rises exactly due east and sets exactly due west.
It’s a day and night of equality: the same amount of daylight and dark everywhere on the globe.
Krakatoa in the next post.
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