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Bob Cunningham | all galleries >> Galleries >> La Luna > Biggest brightest Full Moon...
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12-DEC-2008

Biggest brightest Full Moon...

Although I didn't get any really decent closeups of it, I really like the way this turned out.

From National Geographic's website:

Although a full moon happens every month, the one that rises tomorrow will appear about 30 percent brighter and 14 percent larger than the other full moons seen so far this year. That's because our cosmic neighbor will be much closer than usual. The moon will be at its closest perigee—the nearest it gets to Earth during its egg-shaped orbit around our planet.

At its farthest from Earth, the moon is said to be at apogee.

Perigee and apogee each happen generally once a month, but the moon's wobbly orbit means that its exact distance at each of those events varies over the year.

The moon's phase can also be different during each apogee and perigee.

"Typically we don't have the full moon phase and perigee coinciding at the same time, so that makes this event particularly special," said Ed Krupp, director of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, California.

What's more, tomorrow's event will be the closest lunar perigee since 1993, at 221,560 miles (356,566 kilometers) from Earth. The moon's farthest apogee for the year will occur a couple weeks later on December 26, when the natural satellite will be 252,650 miles (406,601 kilometers) from Earth.

Canon EOS 40D
2s f/16.0 at 118.0mm iso800 full exif

other sizes: small medium original auto
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