I’m looking at the Moon right now: it looks completely normal to me. It’s maybe 60 degrees above the horizon and full, but otherwise completely normal.
After Googling, this is the supposed difference. No wonder I can’t tell the difference.
I guess I’ll start looking for Perseid meteors now.
I am sitting outside right now and the moon seems unusually bright to me. Very pretty!
No sign of the Perseid meteor showers but they are not supposed to be visible here until shortly before dawn.
I was planning on getting a Supermoon rising photo this evening. Lucky I’m working instead because it’s heavy cloud cover here and there’d be nothing to see.
Best thing about my house: essentially zero light pollution. I can see one streetlight from my front porch, but I have to lean out past the railing. The back yard is so dark that the view of the nighttime sky is just extraordinary. I hope to finally have a clear night tomorrow to watch the moonrise. (Even tonight, though, the moon just cleared the trees behind the house. I’m sitting outside with the dog, without the porch light, and I can see the entire yard quite clearly. 'Tis lovely.)
These days, even the moon gets hyped. This “super moon” stuff is silly. The difference in size is not noticeable unless you take pictures and compare the two images side by side. I never heard of the “super moon” until recently and they’ve been happening frequently all my life. There is NO difference in brightness associated with the super moon, only a difference in the apparent size. There is a slight difference in brightness annually for the moon, but that is not noticeable either and has nothing to do with the super moon.
Here in Colorado Springs I can see the moon out my window as I type. It’s very clear and bright. Of course, I’m around 5000 feet closer to it than a lot of y’all.
The moon’s shining brightly here at the moment, although it doesn’t look particularly super. What is notably ‘super’ though is the high tide. I’ve just been out for my evening walk and the usual spring tide is lapping significantly higher up the harbour walls and wharf piers.
And because of the hype, some people seem to think that the moon stays the same distance from the Earth, except that every once in a while, with very little warning, it jumps closer. Then, after a single night, it goes back to its regular orbit. If you didn’t see it on that one night, too bad. Maybe it’ll happen again at some other point in your lifetime. Just be sure to watch the news because they are the best source for phenomena like this. :smack:
Yep, I just got the “minor coastal flooding” SMS warning. Full moon, high tide, possibility of heavy thunderstorms simultaneous to the high tide. Those are always fun in Savannah - where I no longer live, but I keep forgetting to change the parameters of my text notifications… :smack:
As everyone says, they do hype these things up. But suppose you meet a friend who seems to be that much taller, possibly because they decided to wear heeled boots instead of the flats or loafers they usually wear. You’d certainly notice it, especially in familiar contexts such as doors and furniture.
So with the Moon. It needs to be seen near the horizon for the difference to be noticeable.
FWIW these are the first picture I’ve taken where you can see the “seas” at all. One factor may be that I don’t live in L.A. anymore, and there’s definitely a lot less light pollution where I now live, even if it still isn’t a dark-sky paradise by any means.
Just as bad is the “blue moon” nonsense, when a blue moon got defined as the second full moon in a month. Statistically there could be two or more blue moons per year (don’t quote me on that though). I always thought a blue moon was supposed to be a rare atmospheric effect due to bugs or smoke in the air, not something you can predict on the calendar.
It looks enormous here in Bancroft, Ontario. I’m at the cottage and there are zero lights to interfere . . . it seems much brighter and definitely bigger.