APOD: Sun vs Super Moon (2012 May 11)

[APOD Robot]

Sun vs Super Moon

Explanation: The Super Moon wins, by just a little, when its apparent size is compared to the Sun in this ingenious composite picture. To make it, the Full Moon on May 6 was photographed with the same camera and telescope used to image the Sun (with a dense solar filter!) on the following day. Of course, on May 6 the Moon was at perigee, the closest point to Earth in its eliptical orbit, making it the largest Full Moon of 2012. Two weeks later, on May 20, the Moon will be near apogee, the most distant point in its orbit, so by then it will be nearly at its smallest apparent size. It will also be a dark New Moon on that date. And for some the New Moon will be surprisingly easy to compare to the Sun, because on May 20 the first solar eclipse of 2012 will be visible from much of Asia, the Pacific, and North America. Along a path 240 to 300 kilometers wide, the eclipse will be annular. Near apogee the smaller silhouetted Moon will fit just inside the bright solar disk.

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[owlice]

Perigee, apogee: golly gee, and whee!
Annular eclipse of the bright solar disk,

Oh, it's too early, entirely too early for this; maybe someone else can puzzle out the next few lines.

Anyway, cool APOD, and I already have a cart full of eclipse glasses and viewers for the June Venus transit so I might as well place the order today and plan to be somewhere I can see the annular eclipse.

[Neptune]

I wish I could see the Anular Solar Eclipse, but I don't think so, because I am in South America, so will be quite imposible haha!

Anyways, I remember that full moon on last May 6th and I've never seen the moon that big!! It was like 6:30 pm and I was with my partner and my cousin and I was crossing the street and then I saw the moon at the end of the streets and I got completely astonished in the middle of the streets, they took my hand and pulled me to the other side of the street! hahaha!

After that, I was so hurry because I wanted to go to the 17th floor in my building to see if I could take some pictures, but the time that I take to get there was enough and the Moon got smaller and also my camera didn't help me either...

Anyways, the mental image that I have of that day blows my mind!

Excellent Picture today!

[starstruck]

. . may I . .

Perigee, apogee: golly gee, and whee!
Looks like Owlice got fuddled with her lines of poetry
Annular eclipse of the bright solar disk,
If you don't get to see it, well there's always Asterisk!

Hey Neptune, you really cracked me up there! Next time don't take the stairs, try the elevator!!!

Doubt I'll see the eclipse this time . . for sure it'll be cloudy anyhow!

[orin stepanek]

wolves howl at the full moon!

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[Neptune]

I swear I took the elavator! I spent only 10 or 15 minutes since I was in the street until I reached the roof... There was the longest minutes of my life and the Moon rise up and I couldn't see it as great as a while ago...

But was fun

[Ann]

Starstruck, I love that poetry!

Got to tell a Sun-and-Moon story of my own. I was on the bus, feeling sort of... well, tired, lost in my thoughts, not paying attention to very many things around me. There was a young couple next to me, and I hardly looked at them, either. But as the bus slowly labored along a suburban street, I heard the girl say to her boyfriend:

"Look at the Sun!"

Her boyfriend looked. I looked, too. I was still partly in the world of my daydreams, looking out of the bus window as the Sun looked back at me.

Wowzers. The Sun was really large.

And not only that... the Sun looked... off-color. It looked kind of... sick. Really... pale. And sort of blotchy, too.

I stood there, on the bus, my thoughts slowly drifting from whatever they had been wrapping themselves around to the strange Sun and the fate of humanity. Could we survive under such a weak sun?

And then I heard the girl's boyfriend speak out, and his words penetrated the fog of my brain:

"That's not the Sun. That's the Moon."

Oh. Yes. Yes, of course. It was the Moon, not the Sun. Of course it was the Moon! Hey, it was even kind of dark outside! How often is it dark when the Sun is up? Huh?

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

But the world was normal again, and I didn't daydream much during the rest of that bus ride.

Ann

[rigelan]

Ann. Your story is prose, and yet the way it is written, it feels poetic.

[Ann]

Thank you, rigelan!

Ann

[Moonlady]

A woman I knew well told me that she saw the full moon at perigee for the first time and she was shocked to see a very large moon, she screamed and called her
husband and told him the moon is falling toward earth and that they will die.

I saw years ago a crescent moon at the perigee and it was so asthonishing because the dark places of the moon was also with details visible and sort of greyish. It was
so beautiful and I could not stop watching.

[starstruck]

Thanks Ann!

Moonlady, with you being a being of the moon, and a super-moon-being you be, undoubtedly, you surely know that was 'Earthshine' that you saw; the light being reflected back off the Earth and illuminating the 'dark side'

[owlice]

. . may I . .

Perigee, apogee: golly gee, and whee!
Looks like Owlice got fuddled with her lines of poetry
Annular eclipse of the bright solar disk,
If you don't get to see it, well there's always Asterisk!

Yes, you may, and I'm so glad you did!!! Kudos and thank you!!!