Tonight we were treated to a Super Perigee Moon outside our front door. I'm sure my astrology friends will correct me if I'm wrong (and yes, I meant to type astrology instead of astronomy because it bothers them so damn much when I do that and... well, that tickles me) but if my high school science class knowledge serves me, the perigee is the point on the orbit at which the moon is closest to the Earth (the apogee is the point at which it's further away). The moon is full tonight about an hour away from perigee, so it should look larger and brighter any full moon since 1993. When The Dormouse asked me when this would happen again I told her "probably not in my lifetime," but it turns out that Professor Google says it'll happen again in 2016 so I was Wrongy Mcwrongerson about that. I guess Mark Twain is still the only one who can predict his death by astronomical events.

I took my camera and tripod out in the front yard and took about fifty pictures, trying to get a photo that showed both the definition and the color we saw in the sky. Sadly, this was the best I could do. To the eye, the moon was a gorgeous burnt yellow color and no matter how I messed with the settings and the ISO, I couldn't reproduce it with the camera. I thought about throwing a tint over the whole picture in Photoshop but that just seemed like cheating. Finally when the neighbors began to stare at the crazy lady in the yard pondering the sky for twenty minutes and my feet were numb from standing in the grass barefooted, I gave up and settled on this:


Good news though... NASA says that while the Moon looks fourteen to twenty percent larger and thirty percent brighter than it normally looks, this celestial event poses no danger to the Earth. Whew.

My feet are another story.


*points to whomever can place the post title