The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: December 14, 2008

Official News page 8


REAL LIFE NEWS: THE BIG MOON

by Hazed

If you looked up in the sky on Friday night you would have seen a very big moon, as it sailed across the sky closer to the Earth than it had been at any time for the last 15 years.

The moon's orbit around the Earth is not a perfect circle, it's an ellipse, which means that its distance from us isn't constant. As it passed over the northern hemisphere on Friday, it was a tad over 218,750 miles away, which is just about 18,750 miles closer than normal.

The moon was full on Friday so if the sky was clear where you were, you'd have seen it appear up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter. Or maybe not - "The Moon may be brighter and may appear somewhat larger, but it's really quite hard for the eye to notice the difference; the eye will compensate for the extra brightness, it's not like going from night to day," said Dr Robert Massey of the UK Royal Astronomical Society.

In London it was raining (what a surprise!), so I didn't get a chance to see the big moon. What about you?


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