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Showing posts with the label apogee

Supermoon Gallery from Around the World

If you gazed toward the night sky this weekend, you may have noticed that the full moon looked a little bit brighter and bigger. That's because this full moon occurred while the moon was at its closest distance to Earth — its perigee. As the moon revolves around the Earth, there's a relatively small fluctuation in the distance between the two bodies. The moon doesn't revolve in a perfectly circular orbit; instead, it has an elliptical orbit just like the Earth's orbit around the sun. During yesterday's perigee, the moon was 221,824 miles away compared to a 252,581 mile stretch at its most distant point. NASA estimated that this year's supermoon would be up to 14 percent brighter and 30 percent larger than a typical full moon. For your lunar enjoyment, we've rounded up some of the most eye-catching snapshots of this past weekend's supermoon from around the world. The supermoon rises behind the Washington Monument on June 23, 2013. Image Credit