Tonight Biggest Moon of '09

[JustinNed]

Robert Roy Britt
Editorial Director
SPACE.com robert Roy Britt
editorial Director
space.com – Fri Jan 9, 12:56 pm ET

If skies are clear Saturday, go out at sunset and look for the giant moon rising in the east. It will be the biggest and brightest one of 2009, sure to wow even seasoned observers.

Earth, the moon and the sun are all bound together by gravity, which keeps us going around the sun and keeps the moon going around us as it goes through phases. The moon makes a trip around Earth every 29.5 days.

But the orbit is not a perfect circle. One portion is about 31,000 miles (50,000 km) closer to our planet than the farthest part, so the moon's apparent size in the sky changes. Saturday night (Jan. 10) the moon will be at perigee, the closest point to us on this orbit.

It will appear about 14 percent bigger in our sky and 30 percent brighter than some other full moons during 2009, according to NASA. (A similar setup occurred in December, making that month's full moon the largest of 2008.)

High tides

Tides will be higher, too. Earth's oceans are pulled by the gravity of the moon and the sun. So when the moon is closer, tides are pulled higher. Scientists call these perigean tides, because they occur when the moon is at or near perigee. (The farthest point on the lunar orbit is called apogee.)

This month's full moon is known as the Wolf Moon from Native American folklore. The full moon's of each month are named. January's is also known as the Old Moon and the Snow Moon.

A full moon rises right around sunset, no matter where you are. That's because of the celestial mechanics that produce a full moon: The moon and the sun are on opposite sides of the Earth, so that sunlight hits the full face of the moon and bounces back to our eyes.

At moonrise, the moon will appear even larger than it will later in the night when it's higher in the sky. This is an illusion that scientists can't fully explain. Some think it has to do with our perception of things on the horizon vs. stuff overhead.

Try this trick, though: Using a pencil eraser or similar object held at arm's length, gauge the size of the moon when it's near the horizon and again later when it's higher up and seems smaller. You'll see that when compared to a fixed object, the moon will be the same size in both cases.

More lunacy

If you have other plans for Saturday night, take heart: You can see all this on each night surrounding the full moon, too, because the moon will be nearly full, rising earlier Friday night and later Sunday night.

Interestingly, because of the mechanics of all this, the moon is never truly 100 percent full. For that to happen, all three objects have to be in a perfect line, and when that rare circumstance occurs, there is a total eclipse of the moon.

A departing fact: The moon is moving away as you read this, by about 1.6 inches (4 centimeters) a year. Eventually this drift will force the moon to take 47 days to circle our world.

Pretty cool, `eh?

 

[Carebear]

Let`s celebrate :!:

 

[Forkbender]

It is pretty big.

 

[Ahuaeynjxs]

Yeah it was quite big here too ! Actually very impressive...

 

[Ahuaeynjxs]

I just love hearing that scientists are confused, and that they don't understand such an obvious optical illusion :lol:

 

[????????]

^^write them an e-mail explaining to them how it is then

ah, i wished i had known of this last weekend. now that i do, i remember talking about the moon with a friend some days ago. i didn't believe him when he said that the moon actually changed size sometimes, from our perspective. and he pretty much explained what it says above about the orbit of the moon and such. i remember thinking that it was indeed bigger and somewhat "closer" than normal

 

[GOD]

Isnt it on a slightly eliptical orbit so some timers it is further away than others , and the lower it apears in the sky the bigger it seems because the air bends the light ?

 

[Forkbender]

If you bend over and look at the moon through between the legs, it also appears bigger. No joke.

 

[GOD]

Have you got no underpants on again ? Must one stand on a chair ? Has it got hairs on ? Maybe its one of your balls ?

 

[Forkbender]

I remember incorrectly. It looks normal when you do that.

Please click here.

 

[Ahuaeynjxs]

Its easy but if I told them they'd have to remodel Newton AND Einstein's model so much it wouldn't be theirs anymore.

Not many people are ready to do that...

 

[Meduzz]

What model do you propose then?

 

[Ahuaeynjxs]

One in which rotation of massive objects exert a non-newtonian force upon space-time. Thats the most logical conclusion for now with the available scientific data.

But I think god is right too the moon is on a kind of grand cycle with a slightly "eliptical" orbit, but that wouldn't account for it appearing 2 times larger...

 

[Meduzz]

Since rotation is a time dependent process itself I think it would make things just lots more complicated?

 

[Ahuaeynjxs]

Definately... while simplifying others.

Like how to lower the energy needed to split hydrogen and oxygen in water.

But I wouldn't use that "free energy" before we understood completely where it comes from and what it drags in its trail, and right now, we don't.

For all we know it can bleed the earth by creating a rip in her EM field.

 

[Meduzz]

"Like how to lower the energy needed to split hydrogen and oxygen in water. "

Please clarify?

 

[GOD]

""free energy""

Please explain .

 

[Ahuaeynjxs]

Oh easy, fit a magnitised gyroscope spinning over 10000 RPM inside any hydrogen generating device, you'll see a major difference for the electricity you use.

We now have technology that split hydrogen merely by putting "activated" titanium into water. A well made gyroscope takes a bit of energy to start, but then it's not that much to keep it going, I'd bet it would be easy to demonstrate how the Einstein law dosen't follow up in such an experiment.

Thats dynamics we observe daily, but that we tend to dismiss because of the comfort of the regular physics...

A cigar football spinning throw goes higher and falls faster than a non spinning throw.

You could read some of Bruce Depalma's papers to understand the nature of his discoveries, I'm not certain the actual free energy machine conundrum is meant to be linked intimately to his research, and his tragic death only underlines this very troubled time in history which we purposefully know we don't know all about.

http://depalma.pair.com/Absurdity/Absur ... Field.html

And we now even have solar powered hydrogen splitting metals :

 

[Meduzz]

But gyroscopes are part of the newtonian system you're trying to break down?

Why is the one thing right and the other thing wrong? So you have a theory that sounds super cool?

 

[GOD]

"Bruce Depalma"

Did he kill himself out of shame ?