The Mini-Moon Cometh: Catch the Smallest Full Moon of 2015 This Thursday

Thursday, March 5, 2015

The Mini-Moon Cometh: Catch the Smallest Full Moon of 2015 This Thursday

The Mini-Moon Cometh: Catch the Smallest Full Moon of 2015 This Thursday:

The first known reference of a Mini-Moon? A perigee versus apogee Full Moon from 2011. Credit and copyright: Ken Lord.

Supermoons. Blood Moons. Moons both Black and Blue… by now, you’d think that there was nothing new under the Sun (or Moon, as it were) when it comes to new unofficial lunar terminology.

Sure, the Moon now seems more colorful than controversial viral dress shades. Love it or loathe it, the Internet can sure set a meme in motion. And this week’s Full Moon on Thursday evening offers up one of our faves, as the most distant Full Moon of 2015 occurs on March 5th. Yup, the Mini-Moon is indeed once again upon us, a time when the Full Moon appears slightly smaller than usual as seen from the Earth. But can you really tell the difference?

The third Full Moon of the year occurs this week on Thursday, March 5th. Also known as the Worm or Sap Moon by the Algonquin tribes of New England, the moment of Full phase occurs at 18:07 Universal Time (UT) or 1:07 PM Eastern Standard Time (EST). This is also just over 10 hours after apogee, which occurs at 7:36 UT/2:36 AM EST. This month’s apogee is also an exceptionally distant one, measuring 406,385 kilometres from the center of the Earth to the center of the Moon. This is just 80 kilometres shy of the most distant apogee of 2015 on September 14^th, which occurs when the Moon is near New phase.

Can you spy Jupiter next to the waxing gibbous Moon before sunset tonite? Credit: Stellarium.

Apogee for the Moon ranges from 404,000 to 406,700 kilometres distant, and the Full Moon appears 29.3 arc minutes across near apogee versus 34.1’ across near perigee as seen from the Earth.

This is also the closest apogee near a Full Moon time-wise until January 27^th, 2032.

What is a Mini-Moon? As with a Supermoon, we prefer simply defining a Mini-Moon as a Full Moon which occurs within 24 hours of apogee. That’s much more definitive in our book rather than the cryptic and often cited ‘within 90% of its orbit’ refrain for Supermoons.

And speaking of which, we’ve got three ‘Super’ Full Moons in 2015, with the very closest Super (Duper?) Full Moon occurring within an hour of perigee on September 28^th during the final total lunar eclipse of the ongoing tetrad… what will the spin doctors of the Internet make of this? A ‘Super Duper Blood Moon,’ anyone?

The path of the Moon this week also takes it towards the Fall equinoctial point in the astronomical constellation of Virgo, as it crosses Leo and nicks the corner of the non-zodiacal constellation Sextans. The Moon reaches Full two weeks prior to the Vernal Equinox, which falls this year on March 20^th. Keep an eye on the Moon, as the first eclipse of 2015 and this year’s only total solar eclipse also occurs just 13 hours prior to the equinox for observers in the high Arctic. (More on that next week).

Can’t wait til Thursday? Tonight, observers across Canada, northern Maine, and Europe will see a fine occultation of the star Acubens (a.k.a. Alpha Cancri) by the 94% illuminated waxing gibbous Moon:

The ‘shadow footprint’ for tonight’s occultation of Acubens by the Moon. Credit: Occult 4.0.1.

Alpha Cancri is 175 light years distant, and folks living along the U.S./Canadian border will be treated to a fine grazing occultation as the double star plays hide and seek along the limb of the Moon. This is number 17 in an ongoing series of 21 occultations of the star by the Moon stretching out until June 20th, 2015. There’s a wide separation of 11” between the star’s A and B components, and there are suspicions from previous lunar occultations that Alpha Cancri A may itself be a double star as well.

We caught a similar occultation of the star Lambda Geminorum by the Moon this past Friday:

Ever feel sorry for moonless Venus? This Wednesday night also offers a chance to spy Venus with a brief ‘pseudo-moon,’ as +6^th magnitude Uranus passes just 15’ — less than half the apparent diameter of a Full Moon — from brilliant -4^th magnitude Venus. Neith, the spurious 18th century moon of Venus lives! From the vantage point of Venus on March 4^th, the Earth and Moon would shine at magnitudes -2.3 and +1.5, respectively, and sit about 4 arc minutes apart.

The rising Full ‘Mini-Moon’ of March 5th. Credit: Starry Night Education Software.

Does the rising Full Moon look smaller to you than usual this week? While the apparent change in diameter from apogee to perigee is slight, it is indeed noticeable to the naked eye observers. Remember, the Moon is actually about one Earth radius (6,400 kilometres) more distant on the local horizon than when it’s directly overhead at the zenith. The Moon is also moving away from us at a current rate of 1-2 centimetres a year, meaning that Mini-Moons will get ever more distant in epochs hence.

Already, annular solar eclipses are currently more common than total ones by a ratio of about 11 to 9. The first annular eclipse as seen from the Earth went unheralded some time about 900 million to a billion years ago, and 1.4 billion years hence, the last total solar eclipse will occur.

The rising waxing gibbous Moon against the daytime sky. Photo by author.

Be sure to get out and enjoy the rising Mini-Moon later this week!

-Send those Mini-Moon pics in to Universe Today.

-Looking for eclipse sci-fi? Check out Dave Dickinson’s eclipse-fueled tales Exeligmos and Shadowfall.

About David Dickinson

David Dickinson is an Earth science teacher, freelance science writer, retired USAF veteran & backyard astronomer. He currently writes and ponders the universe from Tampa Bay, Florida.

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the United States government agency responsible for the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

UFO SIGHTINGS PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as "An unidentified flying object; a 'flying saucer'." The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe. The acronym "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAF's official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short." Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include "flying flapjack", "flying disc", "unexplained flying discs", "unidentifiable object", and "flying saucer". The phrase "flying saucer" had gained widespread attention after the summer of 1947. On June 24, a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over 1,200 mph (1,931 km/h). At the time, he described the objects' shape as being somewhat disc-like or saucer-like, leading to newspaper accounts of "flying saucers" and "flying discs". In popular usage the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft. and because of the public and media ridicule associated with the topic, some investigators prefer to use such terms as unidentified aerial phenomenon (or UAP) or anomalous phenomena, as in the title of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP).

UFO PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

UFO - Unidentified Flying Object An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or government-related conspiracy theories, and have become popular subjects in fiction. While UFOs are often later identified, sometimes identification may not be possible owing to the usually low quality of evidence related to UFO sightings (generally anecdotal evidence and eyewitness accounts). Stories of fantastical celestial apparitions have been told since antiquity, but the term "UFO" (or "UFOB") was officially created in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all such reports. In its initial definition, the USAF stated that a "UFOB" was "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." Accordingly, the term was initially restricted to that fraction of cases which remained unidentified after investigation, as the USAF was interested in potential national security reasons and/or "technical aspects" (see Air Force Regulation 200-2). During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as "flying saucers" or "flying discs". The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit (e.g., 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, 1953 CIA Robertson Panel, USAF Project Blue Book, Condon Committee).

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Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Thursday, March 5, 2015