Supermoon

If you have listened to the news this past week in between talk about the election results you might have seen something about a supermoon. The news describes it as the closest moon in the last 69 years which is not exactly correct and miss leads the public. This and other recent issues gives me less confidence in the news media in general.  If you want a complete description of what a supermoon is and why this one is special check out the article on space.com  However the simple explanation is that a supermoon is when the full moon appears near it perigee (the closest point in its orbit). So the special thing about this FULL moon is that it becomes full closer to it perigee than any other full moon has since 1948. It is a little bigger and brighter than normal but unless you have a way to accurately measure the size and brightness of the moon it is really not noticeable to the naked eye.

It did give me an excuse though to try and take some pictures of the moon on Sunday night. At 8 pm the moon peaked up above the trees in my backyard so I took out the telescope and found the moon. I hooked up my iPod touch to the eye piece with my home made holder and took a bunch of photos. The moon is really bright when viewed in a telescope so you have to try a lot of different exposure levels to get a picture that is sharp and shows some details. You also need a little luck to capture the picture during moments of calm in the atmosphere. Out of about 30 photo I got 3 or 4 decent ones.

I am still learning how to use the iPod touch to take photos so should be able to get some even better photos the next time there is a supermoon which is actually next month although it will be slightly smaller than this months.