SuperMoon comments

[ballaratdragons]

I was going to make a personal observation but there are so many SuperMoon threads I didn't know which one I would put it in, so I thought: A 'comment thread' :P

My personal observation of the Super Moon viewed through a break in the clouds was:

I couldn't really see any difference :shrug:
The ground seemed a tad brighter maybe, but not really noticable, and the size of the Moon looked the same as always.
So for me there was no WOW! :thumbsup:

[iceman]

It was only 0.8% bigger than last full moon.

Nothing really 'super' about it, but it got the media attention and gets people outside looking up.

[ballaratdragons]

Yeah, any night sky publicity is good publicity :lol:

[Mariposa]

Unfortunately there was no supermoon here due to thick clouds, not even the sun was visible today.

[bloodhound31]

Just looked like any other full moon to me.

My comment...

"Meh."

Out.

[Ric]

It seemed a bit brighter than usual Ken.

It looked pretty cool reflecting off the dam though.

Cheers

[pgc hunter]

A 16% increase in brightness of an already blinding object and a 1-2' increase increase in diameter over average is pretty much impossible to see.

It was full overcast here in Australia's worst climate so not that it made a difference anyway.

[ballaratdragons]

Sab, it was a 16% increase in Diameter. It was supposed to be a 30% increase in brightness.

I reckon it looked 5% brighter on the ground but I can't be accurate as I didn't have my Moonometer with me :lol:

[cybereye]

I've just read this quote from an article (couriermail.com.au) (http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/supermoon-lights-up-the-night-sky/story-e6freoof-1226348320497) regarding the Super Moon which had me scratching my head...:question:

"Photographers around the world turned out to capture the spectacle, which appeared in daylight in some parts of the globe."

Daylight you say... can someone explain this to me please... would it be seen in daylight (very long daylight hours) in a northern spring?

Cheers,
Mario

[von Tom]

The Moon definitely looked bigger to me last night. And through the camera even more noticeable, especially because, for the first time, I couldn't fit the entire disc in a single frame.

Tom

[leon]

Have to agree, didn't look much different, but it got a lot of people out there for a look, who knows maybe a few more aspiring armature astronomers in the making.

Leon

[Liz]

Well there you go, probably a good guage.:thumbsup:



I agree, great to get people out there admiring and taking images. :)

Overall, it was a bful Moonrise, but a a litttle brighter, hard to tell though. Nothing monumental though. :help:

[MattT]

Moon? What Moon? All I saw was clouds.
pgc hunter's signature says it all quite beautifully.
Cheers Matt

[jjjnettie]

To my eyes it was definitely larger and brighter than last full moon.
And it's NOT due to the fact I have new glasses. LOLOL
All the hype has made a lot of people, who otherwise wouldn't have gone outside to look up, go outside and look up. :) And there are so many photos of the full Moon being posted on the Net, it's just wonderful. :D

[astroron]

It didn't look any different to me , but I agree with you comment JJJ if it made people go outside and take a look it is a positive :)
cheers :thumbsup:

[ZeroID]

Sat night was clear and it did seem brighter, dunno about bigger. Sunday night was cloudy so could not comment.

I put SPF 50 Moon Block on just in case ... :D

[jjjnettie]

My left eye is still recovering from looking at the Moon unfiltered through the 10" Dob.
I slipped the lid back on and uncapped the aperture reduction hole thingy and viewed using that instead. :)
I had Josh (Nortilus) , and Jim and Roey Fitzpatrick in my back yard sharing the experience. :D

[lacad01]

To me looked slightly brighter than normal

[ballaratdragons]

Mario, unless the observer was close to the South Pole, it is a ridiculous claim to make. The Full Moon is opposite the sun, so either one is up, or the other.
Maybe for some people in Antarctica, Southern tip of NZ, or somewhere like that :shrug:

I would have to check where the Moon was during daytime for those places.
Sounds a bit odd.

[mithrandir]

It was so bright I was doing "frame and focus" with a solar filter. Imaging without the filter it was overexposed at 0.0005 sec and gain=1. Seems I need either an C8 size ND filter or a mono camera, filter wheel and matching ND filter.



Ken, at my place (northwestern Sydney) sunset was listed for 17:11 and moonrise 17:08. Of course neither horizon is visible so the point is moot.

Melbourne had 17:28 and 17:24 so you had 25% more of both being up.
Hobart had 17:08 and 17:01
The southern tip of NZ had 17:41 and 17:30
The southern tip of South America had 16:53 and 16:22 (on the 5th).
The edge of Antarctica at 151 deg E had 14:49 and 14:04 (using AEST for convenience). Much further south and the Sun doesn't rise at this time of year.

The further south, the longer both were up.

[bmitchell82]

In general it would have been more annoying than usual, but the "extra bright moon" took a back seat to the 40mm of rain..... which is more evil than the other? .... all evil i says!

[apaulo]

Hi all,

Well visually the Moon's Perigee may not have been so impressive but I went surfing today and the tides were quite extreme (spring tides).
Usually a spring tide in Port Phillip Bay will peak at 1.45 meters but today it reached 1.75 and tomorrow 1.80 meters.
When the moon is full or new, the gravitational pull of the moon and sun are combined and creates a spring tide. Today the tide height was noticeably higher.

Regards Paul. :)

[stephenb]

I saw it through the light clouds with a beautiful rainbow halo around it. Yes it was a little brighter than normal, but a lot of media hype yet again. I've tried to educate a few people with shades of the Mars email hoax in the back of my mind.

[trek1701]

My understanding on the difference between perigee and apogee in diameter can be as much as 10%



Cheers Mark

[jjjnettie]

This was the winning photo in a comp for best "Super Moon" photo in SEQ?
Is it genuine or photoshopped?
We've been puzzling over it.

Mods, I'll remove this post if it's inappropriate.
Just that I have my own opinion and want to see what others think.

[Scopie]

It seemed unusually bright here in Perth. Sat, Sun and Mon night. We had a lot of rain that cleared the junk out of the air betweentimes. Whether the moon was in a small break between clouds or in a fairly large section of clear sky it still seemed a lot brighter than a normal full to me.

[iceman]

With a telephoto lens from a long way away (or through a telescope) that type of shot is certainly achievable.

[jjjnettie]

I was just looking at the length of the shadow of the tree. It seems as if the Sun was higher than it should be.
Looking closer, the shadow may be falling into a dip behind the tree. :shrug:
An optical illusion making the shadow seem shorter than it actually is.

[iceman]

Yeh good point - for the Moon to be that high above the horizon, it would be in the belt of Venus so the Sun would've set already - meaning no shadow.

Maybe a composite after all.

[mithrandir]

Nettie, given that sunset in Brisbane was at 17:13 and moonrise was at 17:11 I doubt very much this was from May 6, 2012. It might be from a day earlier when the moon is almost full and rises about an hour before sunset, but the colours look more like summer.

[von Tom]

It looks like it may have been taken the previous day. The libration looks ok and there seems to be a bit of a terminator at the bottom, not the top like there was on the evening of the 6th.

[ballaratdragons]

The angle of the tree shadow shows that the Sun was fairly high in the sky. At a guess probably 40 degrees or more.

Near sunset the tree shadow would stretch out for about 100 metres.

[OICURMT]

Photoshopped... look at the shadow of the tree, which should stretch out to the moon at sunset, if the Sun is 180 degrees in the sky, which, with the moon in the sky (well above the horizon) implies that the sun has set, thus no tree shadow should be seen...

Make sense? :question:


<LATE EDIT> Regarding the optical illusion on the shadow... definately possible, as demonstrated by Bad Astronomy and the explanation of the Moon Landing Photos with the different shadow lengths and direction of the astronauts versus the LEM (http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#parallel)

[ballaratdragons]

Another point I have just noticed.

At Full Moon, if the sun was still just up, the tree shadow would point directly in the Moon's direction.
In this image you can clearly see that the Tree shadow is pointing to the right of the Moon.

At the angle the shadow is, it would show a partly shadowed limb on the Moon.

Fake!

[jjjnettie]

Could the photo have been taken in the Morning as the sun was rising? The moon wouldn't have been fully illuminated at that stage.
I'd love to get hold of the exif info. :)
I like to think the photographer made an honest mistake with the date.

[cybereye]

Some points of interest from the photo:

1. The limbs and leaves of the tree look fairly well illuminated so I'm thinking that the Sun is fairly low otherwise those limbs would be in the leaves' shadow.

2. There seems to be a yellowish tinge to the tree, again suggesting a low Sun.

3. My experience with taking a timed exposure using a tripod at sunset is that if you make it too long it looks like a daytime sky rather than at dusk. This picture exhibits this.

4. Checking against Stellarium, the Moon is in the correct orientation for SEQ, but more closely resembles the 5 May rather than the 6 May in a rotational sense.

5. With the amount of rain we've had in SEQ over the last 6 months I would've expected the grass to be a little greener.

6. I think it's kosher (for the 5 May) but then I also think NSW has a real chance this year!

Cheers,
Mario

[mithrandir]

Nettie, I can't see how it could have been taken in the morning. The moon sets before sunrise until after full moon. That would mean it could not have been taken earlier than the 7th.
As for exif data, I can fake any date and time I like. Have a hunt for "exiftool".