SEEN ONLY EVERY 68 YEARS!! !!

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If you enjoy seeing a full moon I really suggest that you read this TODAY, NOT TWO DAYS FROM TODAY: http://earthsky.org/tonight/most-super-supermoon.

It's not impressive at all at least in the London region, UK. It looks exactly the same to the naked eye tonight as it always does. Kind of disappointing.

It looks brighter than usual, but not larger.

It was cloudy.

Close enough to touch.

I've just heard on the news and weather that we get another chance to see the supermoon next month, December 14th.

I must say though, I was really unimpressed by last night's, anyway. I've seen the moon "appear" bigger on other occasions due to perception of proximity to a tree-line horizon and such, without it actually being the supermoon.

Also, all those amazing photos on the web -- you use a particular camera lens to get that dramatic shot; it's not "as is" to the naked eye.

All rather meh.

Yup. I've seen some "blood moons" that looked much bigger and more beautiful.

Saw it this morning, looked slightly bigger, and a little brighter, but not much. I'm waiting for next years' total solar eclipse. Unlike other Solar Eclipses I have experienced, I will be in the path of total darkness.

Yes! I saw an amazing blood moon in my teens that looked larger than this one. And back in the summer I was walking home past a field with a distant line of trees, and the moon had just come up "near" the trees, and looked huge because of the point of reference in the treeline.

Kind of a consolation though I guess, to know that any old moon can be a dramatic one in the right conditions.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the moon is moving further away from earth. As the tides slow the rotation of the earth down the moon move further away to conserve angular momentum. Eventually the earth and the moon will be in a tidal lock that the same side of the earth will face the moon as they revolved around the center of gravity of both bodies.

The moon was much more interesting about 2.5 billion years ago. It was about 85,000 miles from earth just outside of Rouches limit. The high tides were hundreds of feet high and our moon was more of a nightmare than a satellite covering a quarter of the sky. In those times the earth day was about 6 hours. The tides have slowed the rotation of the earth and the moon has moved farther out. Now it is just under a quarter of a million miles away.

I observed it with binoculars form my window, it was incredibly bright.

In many parts of the UK it was so darn overcast during the super moon's zenith, most of us didn't see it, so we made our own super moons by photo-shopping tortilla bread into the night sky.

Much like the latest Call of Duty game, the Supermoon was all hype and delivered very little. It was bright. I wouldn't call it super. I was expecting to see a giant freak moon covering half the sky. I felt let down by the moon and I may be writing the moon a letter with my feelings on the matter. I don't know who manages the moon so I'll have to address my comments "To Whom It May Concern"...

Who cares I am going to see this again at 84.

It was cloudy that night. Damn! Now I will have to live to the age 148 to see it.

The difference in size is very small, almost imperceptible in most viewing conditions. The psychological effect that makes the Moon seem larger when it's near visible objects on the horizon is much greater.

Here is a comparison with a Lunar disk of more typical angular diameter.


The typical variation in the moon's angular diameter at apogee and perigee is small:


When it's nearest to us, it looks about 0.5 (0.49) degrees of arc across. When it's farthest from us, it looks to be about 0.6 (0.56) degrees of arc across.

I think a lot of the excitement and interest in supermoons comes from combining the information we have about the subtle change in apparent size with the beautiful sight in the sky rather than from the actual difference in appearance from observations of the moon at other times.