Mohammed Hamad
JF-Expert Member
- Jan 17, 2011
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World set to witness biggest full moon in two decades next week 2 hours ago by ?*Kev Hedges Listen to this article (by ReadSpeaker) Next weekend promises full moon gazers the biggest visible moon since 1992. The appearance of the moon could be up to 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter in the sky, providing atmospheric conditions allow a clear view. ? On March 19 the full moon will reach its lunar perigee cycle - a distance of 221,567 miles (356,577km) from Earth in its elliptical orbit. It has not been this close for 19 years. There is growing excitement surrounding the spectacle on micro-blogging site Twitter. The lunar phenomenon has raised concerns surrounding "supermoons" and the association with extreme weather events and earthquakes, reports Yahoo . The Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004 occurred around the time of a large full moon on December 26 that year. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was also associated with a large full moon. However Steve Owens, a dark sky blogger, says this supermoon will be about two per cent closer to the Earth than it is most months at perigee. He also said: "The Moon will be a few percent bigger in the sky, but your eye wont really be able to tell the difference". He also says any volcanoes, earthquakes or extreme weather phenomena that occurs will "have nothing to do with the moon". The reason the moon is so close is because it orbits the Earth in an elliptical orbit, that means not perfectly circular, and so in each orbit there is a closest approach, this is called perigee and a furthest approach, called apogee.
