Supermoon will rise in weekend night sky

FOX NEWS ^ | 06/22/13 | Space.com

[Doogle]

The largest full moon of 2013, a so-called "supermoon," will light up the night sky this weekend, but there's more to this lunar delight than meets the eye.

On Sunday, June 23, at 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT), the moon will arrive at perigee — the point in its orbit its orbit bringing it closest to Earth), a distance of 221,824 miles. Now the moon typically reaches perigee once each month (and on some occasions twice), with their respective distances to Earth varying by 3 percent.

[Telepathic Intruder]

Ah, so you might need a hexagonal support structure for the plate glass or something. I wasn’t complaining, by the way; it might be more realistic with that but would it be an aesthetic improvement or just lost on the average viewer? I can nitpick and appreciate at the same time, and most don’t consider such minor nuances anyway.

[Secret Agent Man]

watch out for the super werewolves. i’m super cereal...

[cripplecreek]

I nitpick myself all the time. Its how I get better at it.

[Jack Hydrazine]

I'm going to hang out with this fine family tonight...



and work on my Moon tan!

[ZinGirl]

if you don't stop, you'll go blind.

:P

[Telepathic Intruder]

Better to be self-critical than self-flattering. But I’ve also learned to curb my criticism of others since I’m not so fond of bar fights. Unless it’s the internet, of course.

[lurk]

As we were walking last night, I thought it seemed bigger. Now I know it is. Now would be a good time to send a hundred million liberals there to colonize it.

[Chode]

pretty damn big on the horizon here tonight

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

A long time ago, I read some speculation that two or three days on either side of a Lunar perigee, there is a far greater chance of a major earthquake.

[BlueDragon]

[Albion Wilde]

[schm0e]

Mary Moon!

[DennisR]

Of course there are natural reasons (gravitational force/mass of the moon and the earth) for this, but it is still pretty amazing that one side of the moon always faces the earth.

[alexander_busek]

That close together, two planets would not survive each other’s tidal forces (the Roche limit). It’s a common oversight by artists. But I’ll just assume someone is using a telephoto lens instead.

It's a common oversight by laymen to forget that the Roche Limit applies only to satellites which are held together only by their own gravity - i.e., which are not held together by forces other than gravity and which are thus essentially fluid.

Jupiter's Metis and Saturn's Pan are within the Roche Limit, as are countless artificial satellites in Earth orbit.

Their tensile strength allows them to resist disintegration.

Regards,

[Telepathic Intruder]

Yes, of course. And by the way, that doesn't rule out a planet (or moon) having something big in their skies, it just rules out having something big and close, because tidal forces decrease far more rapidly with distance than total gravitational force (an inverse cube law instead of an inverse square). So it's perfectly reasonable for Pandora in the Avatar movie to have a looming gas giant in the sky, but not a close-orbiting similar-massed object.

[alexander_busek]

So it's perfectly reasonable for Pandora in the Avatar movie to have a looming gas giant in the sky, but not a close-orbiting similar-massed object.

Quite. Or even a close-orbiting object with a similar apparent size (but perhaps even far lower mass).

Regards,