January 11, 2009

Perigee Moon

I admit, I did not know what a perigee moon was, but it was explained to me on http://spaceweather.com/. This weekend the full moon was 50,000 km closer to earth than any other full moon that we will have this year. Its rise was spectacular.


Its setting was too, but I was not alert enough to take a picture due to a restless night. The moon was so bright that you could literally sit out and read a book. It would have been a bit chilly, but you could have done it.

We enjoy this spaceweather website as it alerts us to all kinds of celestial phenomena that we can observe here, as opposed to our previous home. You can see satellites pass overhead any time and falling stars are a regular observation, aside from the awesome canopy of stars just about any night.


1 comment:

Shannon said...

I was staying in a hotel in Kansas City this weekend, and the drapes were open to view the downtown lights, and the moon was so bright that it woke me up! I thought the sun was rising because it was actually starting to drown out the lights of the city.