FW: THOUGHT YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED
Hedgepet@stihl.de
Tue, 14 Dec 1999 19:18:57 +0100
This is slightly off-topic, but it will affect our ability to observe.
Plus, its interesting astronomical stuff.
Merry Christmas,
Troy
PS -- I don't have any reference material or links for this. It is word of
mouth to me.
<snip>
Brightest Full Moon in 133 years on the Winter Solstice
For the first time in the life of anyone around today, we'll see a full
moon occur on the Winter solstice, Dec. 22nd, commonly called the first day
of Winter.
Since a full moon on the Winter solstice occurs in conjunction with a
lunar perigee (point in the moon's orbit that is closest to Earth),the moon
will appear about 14% larger than it does at apogee (the point in its
elliptical orbit that is farthest from the Earth). Since the Earth is also
several million miles closer to the sun at this time of the year than in
summer, sunlight striking the moon is about 7% stronger making it brighter.
Also, this will be the closest perigee of the Moon of the year since the
moon's orbit is constantly deforming. If the weather is clear and there is
snow cover where you live, it is believed that even car headlights will be
superfluous. On December 21st, 1866 the Lakota Sioux took advantage of this
combination of occurrences and staged a devastating retaliatory ambush on
soldiers in Wyoming Territory. In layman's terms: It will be a super bright
full moon, much more than the usual AND it hasn't happened this way for 133
years! Our ancestors 133 years ago saw this. Our descendants 100 or so
years from now will see this again.
Pretty cool, eh?
<snip>
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