Sky at Night

The icing on the cake ;-) March 19th 2011 a super "perigee moon" - the biggest in almost 20 years. This is a montage of each waning phase of the supermoon commencing on March 7th and culminating in the full perigee on March 19th. I have been extremely lucky with clear skies this month to produce this montage (put together in Pixelmator). A similar project took me almost a year to complete a while back..... All shots captured with the Olympus E5 and 90-250mm with x2 TC.

March 19th 2011 a super "perigee moon" - the biggest in almost 20 years. I located to clear high (120m ASL) spot with a good easterly horizon view with some foreground trees in order to add scale. This is a size comparison shot versus a full moon from january this year. Both captured using the Olympus E5/E3 and 90-250mm with x2 TC. The colours of the moon as it dipped above the horizon and moved through the pollution transformed from a blood red to copper orange eventually clearing into blinding white. An amazing moonrise. Full Moons vary in size because of the oval shape of the Moon's orbit. It is an ellipse with one side (perigee) about 50,000 km closer to Earth than the other (apogee). Nearby perigee moons are about 14% bigger and 30% brighter than lesser moons that occur on the apogee side of the Moon's orbit. More here - http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/16mar_supermoon/