Super Duper Moon

Tonight's the night...a super duper perigee moon of a lifetime.

I was one year old the last time we had a moon like this.  It will be the brightest moon of our lifetime.  It is also going to be big.  Not to wax technical but the moon is as close to us as it gets and its about 14% bigger to the eye and brighter too because of it...or so it seems to us.


If I were to think this through in some sort of morbid way, I could think that this moon, this close, radiant moon which most everyone on earth will see only once in a lifetime, is really a bookend set of one's life.  My dad was born in 1910, the year of Haley's Comet.  It returned in the late 1980s and he was still alive (78 being a ripe older age) and he noted that although he didn't see the first one (as I didn't see this moon in 1948 either or not that I remember) he felt himself special and lucky to have two passes at one big event. I get two of this as well but if you are, say 50 now, you will be 128 the next time which is to say unlikely.

I had a neighbor growing up who was into all things astronomy and I can remember him calling the perigee moons the "reading moon"; so bright at night you could read a book by it. Some year, way back when, I stood in the snow in the middle of Carroll Park in Bay City, Michigan with him and his telescope.  I could only see sections of the moon as it was bigger than the viewer but I could make out the words in the book that told me about it.  One could reach out and touch it (and wanted to).

Anyway, tonight is going to be fun.  5:14pm EDT.  It won't happen again.