Watch the supermoon tonight

[bkln]

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/10jul_supermoons/

 

This one is pretty cool, I just checked....

[fisher2]

as a scientifically literate person, can i put the "supermoon" into perspective?

 

we have a full moon every 29.5 days, we'll say 4 of those a year is "super" and due to our elliptical orbit  the moons naturally are different sizes during the full phases.

 

if a "small" full moon was shrunk into a 7" pizza a "average" full moon would be a 7.5" pizza...and a "large" full moon would be an 8" pizza.

 

now using this scale do you know how much larger a super-moon would be?

 

the answer is 8.0001" pizza....super-moons are not special and are vastly overrated as far as astrological events go, sorry i know this was just a fun story, science nerds get emails about this moon thing a lot  just trying to get it heard.

 

also i should credit these numbers to where i got them, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson,astrophysicist,cosmologist,chair member(i think president but im not 100% sure on all his roles) of the Hayden planetary society, museum of natural history chair,physics professor at Princeton uni,author...yadda yadda the list goes on

Edited July 13, 2014 by fisher2