Super-Full Moon! A beautiful sight, it may be, but is there anything more to this – other than that? Here in the Solar system, we have 9 `planets’ with a huge number of their own satellites (moons) and asteroids, all orbiting the Sun. All sorts of geometrical effects can be viewed from Earth, as a result of all these. Astronomers don’t get excited much about many of these `events’ – but since Astrology presumes that what happens to stellar bodies has an influence on us and our human lives, astrologers to get excited about various phenomena.
NASA photo of apogee-Perigee (Supermoons)
Facts We have just had one of these – Supermoon! It is when the full moon appears to be bigger than average. It can be about 14% bigger (in diameter) and about 30% brighter..than an average full moon! These occur approximately once every 14 full moons. The next one is on 10th August 2014. The term `Supermoon’ was coined by astrologer Richard Nolle in 1979, arbitrarily defined as:
“…a new or full moon which occurs with the Moon at or near (within 90% of) its closest approach to Earth in a given orbit (perigee). In short, Earth, Moon and Sun are all in a line, with Moon in its nearest approach to Earth..” (wikipedia)
Why? The moon is closer to Earth, so it appears bigger and brighter. That’s the observation. But why is it closer to the Earth? The orbit of the moon around the Earth is not circular but elliptical. The moon completes this orbit once every 29 days, so in that time, at one point, it will be furthest away from the Earth at about (apogee) at 406,000 km distance , and 14 days later, closest to the Earth (apogee) at 357,000 kilometers from Earth . So when a full moon coincides with the point when it is closer to Earth, we call it a Supermoon! (scientific term is perigee-syzygy of the Earth-Moon-Sun system!)
Elliptical earth-moon orbit (c) Mani Navasothy
SUPERMOONS between 2014 to 2020 Here are the dates of the minimum Perigee (moon closest to Earth) and nearest Full moon to those dates (Supermoons) .. f Perigee data taken from Fred Espenak. Full moon date from The American ephermeris for 2000-2050. Table created by me (Mani Navasothy)
Year m/d -Time (gmt) – perigee distance (km) – nearest Supermoon date
2014 Aug 10 – 17:43 -356897 km – Supermoon on 10th August’14
2015 Sep 28 – 01:46 -356877 km – Supermoon on 28th Sept’15 (also Lunar Eclispse!)
2016 Nov 14 – 11:23 -356512 km – Supermoon on 14th Nov’16
2017 May 26 – 01:23 -357210 km – Newmoon on 25th May. (Nearest Supermoon 9th June 2017)
2018 Jan 01 – 21:54 -356566 km – Supermoon on 2nd January’18
2019 Feb 19 – 09:06 -356762 km – Supermoon 19th Feb’19
2020 Apr 07 – 18:08 -356909 km – Supermoon 8th April’20
Note: I’ll double check the rest of the data for this and amend if I find any errors in my matching nearest `supermoon’ to the perigee data. (Anyone of you can do the same..by checking the perigee/ apogee data and looking up full moons near those dates in an ephemeris of course!) -Mani Navasothy (astrologer)
Next Supermoon -28th September2015.
For Supermoon data 2014 to 2020, visit http://www.quantumphoenix.net
Links / ref Astrology basics page at QuantumPhoenix blog http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/16mar_supermoon/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermoon Fred Espenak’s data site for Moon http://astropixels.com/ephemeris/moon/moonperap2001.html
