Perigee Moon over Massachusetts

[Richard Lovison]

Here's my contribution to the perigee moon collection. This was taken at 22:30 eastern daylight time, March 19th.

Olympus E-3
Takahashi FC60 refractor
1/125 sec @F8
ISO 100
tripod
cable release

90730
copyright © reserved 2011, Richard Lovison

[Dave Mills]

Hi Richard, Nice and sharp with good detail.Well handled!

[Roger Clark]

Richard,

Very nice image with lots of nice detail. Well done. And thanks for not calling it a super moon.

It was pretty cloudy for me, so I didn't even try.

Regarding the press calling it a super moon, I suppose it could be considered good because it got people out for a look, but boy what hype. The moon comes close every month, though the closest (perigee) is not always at full moon. The perigee distance does vary. This one was at a distance of 356,577 km. In December 2008, it was 356,567 km (10 km closer, though not at full moon). In January 2010, it was 356,592 km away, so 20 km further. So while this full moon was technically close, it's not that much different for all the hype.

But another factoid: as you see the moon rise, is is getting closer each minute and when it is overhead it is even closer, about 6371 lm closer (on average). In 10 minutes of the moon rising, it gets about 270 km closer to you, so the relative distance of the "super moon" versus other perigees is relatively small. (if you read this earlier when I haa smaller number, it was because I used a cosine where I should have used a sine in the calculation.)

Roger

[Andrew McLachlan]

Very well done Richard, love the detail.

[Robert Amoruso]

Nice work Richard.

Thanks for the technical retake Roger. Very interesting stuff.:w3

[Richard Lovison]

Thanks everyone.

Richard