"On the morning of March 19th, the Moon will be at perigee at 19:10UT (09:10HST), while Full Moon occurs at 18:11UT (08:11HST), about an hour apart. Thus viewers during the night will see the full Moon as about 14% larger than it would appear when the Moon is at apogee. This particular perigee will be a bit closer than average, with the Moon closing to 356,577km." See: http://darkerview.com/darkview/index.php?/archives/1848-Big-Bright-Moon-Reminder.html
Now I take this to be a US site and we were told in Australia that the full moon and the perigee would be on March 20th, so last night I went outside at photographed the moon with my rather clunky digital camera. I haven't worked out yet how much past or before the events described above my picture was taken, but it wouldn't be far off the mark. So you're looking at a rather large bright moon. It was very impressive, but the brightness made it impossible to see any surface detail with the naked eye.
The moon won’t come this close again until November 14, 2016. Put a note in your diaries about that.
AS
1 comment:
Jean and I saw it too. It looked larger than normal as it rose (rather than when high in the night sky). Through binoculars the craters were remarkably clear. Recently I saw the 700th edition of Patrick Moore's "The Sky at Night" on BBC TV and many eminent astronomers said how seeing his early programs had inspired them into the science of astronomy. Richard.
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