Sjeltur

If you go outside tonight and the sky is clear, you’ll see it’s a full Moon. Usually there is nothing special about a full Moon, but this time it’s different: the Moon is very big and bright.

The distance from the Earth to the Moon varies. The orbit of the Moon around the Earth is an ellipse, one side is roughly 50,000 km / 30,000 mi closer to the Earth than the other. Today full Moon happens almost at the same time the Moon is at its closest point to the Earth, this makes the Moon up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter than other full Moons we’ve seen this year!

The picture shows the difference between a full Moon at maximum distance to the Earth (called ‘apogee’) and a full Moon when the distance is at its closest (called ‘perigee’). Today the closest distance from the Earth to the Moon will be 356,566 km / 221,560 mi, it’s actually the closest lunar perigee since 1993.

If you miss the full Moon tonight, perhaps the sky is not clear where you live, the next opportunity to see a big and bright Moon will be on January 30, 2010.