The Moon Of Late

If you looked up at the sky over the weekend you might have noticed a particularly bright moon. Your eyes were not deceiving you as indeed the moon was in an unusual position that meant that it was indeed brighter. The sheer fact was that it was nearer to the earth than usual. It was a super "perigee moon" the biggest in almost 20 years. The last full Moon of such size and so close to the earth occurred in March of 1993.

Full Moons do vary in size because the moon has an oval shaped orbit. It is an ellipse with one side (perigee) about 50,000 km closer to Earth than the other (apogee). Surprisingly, perigee moons are almost 14% bigger and 30% brighter than other lesser moons that occur on the oposing apogee side of the Moon's orbit. The impact on tides is usually not that significant but there are local variations and indeed over the weekend some incidents of vessels going aground in the solent and in other places were attributed to the larger than average moon. At one particular moment, Solent Coastguard reported that there were five vessels aground over the low tide period. Speculation was of the view that this was attributable to the large moon. Hard to tell. There was also speculation that the extra pull of the moon would affect the earth to the extent that it would cause some natural disasters but there is no proof.