Don’t forget to watch the moon on Saturday. The moon will be closest to the earth on that day and will appear to be bigger and brightest of the year, a scientist said Thursday.
Explaining the reason, director SPACE (Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators) C.B. Devgun said: “Some full moons are genuinely larger than others and the one on Saturday will be huge.”
The moon will be 15 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than we will see for the rest of the year, he said.
“This is because the moon’s orbit is an ellipse with one side 50,000 km closer to earth than the other. In the language of astronomy, the two extremes are called ‘apogee’ (far away) and ‘perigee’ (nearby).
“On Jan 30, the moon becomes full, three hours after reaching perigee, making it bigger and brighter than we are going to see for the rest of 2010,” said Devgun.
The moon at perigee will look bigger than it looks in all other positions, as the apparent size of closer objects is always more.
“As this is the second full moon of the month, this will also be a blue moon,” said N.S. Raghunandan Kumar, general secretary of the Planetary Society of India.
