Monday, December 16, 2013

Last and smallest full moon of year 2013

                               Last and smallest full moon of year 2013

Tonight, is the full moon day. People claim that tonight's full moon is the smallest in size compared to full moons of other days.
It is called " moon illusion ". Moon , being a natural satellite of Earth can not become larger or smaller in size.
But tonight's full moon is really smaller in size compared to other full moon days. It depends on the distance of moon from Earth.
Largest distance between Earth and moon is called apogee distance , moon is quite faraway from Earth . Thats why moon is called smallest full moon depending on the distance between two. Smallest distance between moon and Earth is called perigee distance. The maximum difference in apparent size between perigee and apogee full moons is only about 13 percent , not easy to detect with human eye. For me, each and every full moon looks quite same !