{"id":8499,"date":"2015-10-16T17:40:52","date_gmt":"2015-10-16T12:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/?p=8499"},"modified":"2015-10-16T17:40:52","modified_gmt":"2015-10-16T12:10:52","slug":"supermoon-just-moon-whats-big-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/supermoon-just-moon-whats-big-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"The Supermoon is Just a Moon: What\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s the Big Deal about it?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/supermoon1.jpg\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-8500 alignleft\" alt=\"supermoon1\" src=\"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/supermoon1-1024x640.jpg\" width=\"430\" height=\"269\" \/><\/a>There was a time when lunar eclipses were for the geeks. People would look at a lunar eclipse and owe it to \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00cb\u0153Rahu\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2 and \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00cb\u0153Ketu\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2 or whatever dumb story they heard about it. I used to be the one to explain to them the science behind the event and they would either think of me as \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00cb\u0153mad\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2 or \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00cb\u0153genius\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2 as per their preferences.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Today, every kid seems to know about it. But the whole hullabaloo about the \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00cb\u0153SuperMoon\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2 seems so dumb.<br \/>\nWe all know now that the Moon orbits the Earth on an elliptical path. Hence, the distance between the Moon and Earth varies from 362,600 km to 4,05,400 km. When the moon is closer to us, it seems larger and brighter. If it occurs during the full moon phase, it is called the \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00cb\u0153SuperMoon\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">That\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s the whole story. There is nothing new here. The Moon has been doing it for billions of years and humans may have first noticed about its growing and waning size at the time of Greek philosophers!<br \/>\nIt\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s the Angular Size at which we see the Moon that varies and not the Size of the Moon!<br \/>\nLet\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s have a demonstration of the Moon vs SuperMoon. Let\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s take a tennis ball which has a diameter of about 6.6 cm which is placed at the distance r from a human being. Now, change its angular size with respect to the human being by moving it closer and then farther away from him (just as Moon does).<br \/>\nHere are the equations to demonstrate it:<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\/\/ <![CDATA[\ngoogle_ad_client = \"ca-pub-1973513311082962\";     google_ad_slot = \"6209276339\";     google_ad_width = 336;     google_ad_height = 280;\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><br \/>\n<!-- ask2 --><br \/>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\/\/ <![CDATA[\n\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">We find that the closest value at which a tennis ball stands to represent the SuperMoon = 6.89 m while the farthest value at which it stands to represent the reverse (shall we call it as PunyMoon?) = 7.70 m.<br \/>\nThe size of the tennis ball does not really change. It\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s just about how it looks to us.<br \/>\nHere are some things to try the next time you see a SuperMoon phenomenon:<br \/>\n\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u00a2 Notice that your thumb at arm\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s length has the same angular size as the moon from your head. Now, check how much closer you need to bring your thumb to your eye to cover up the SuperMoon.<br \/>\n\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u00a2 Calculate the %change in the apparent diameter, apparent area, and brightness of PunyMoon vs Moon vs SuperMoon (To measure the brightness, you can assume that the moon is a point light source and hence, 1\/r2 expression can be used.)<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\/\/ <![CDATA[\ngoogle_ad_client = \"ca-pub-1973513311082962\";     google_ad_slot = \"4527393537\";     google_ad_width = 336;     google_ad_height = 280;\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><br \/>\n<!-- ask1 --><br \/>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\/\/ <![CDATA[\n\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There was a time when lunar eclipses were for the geeks. People would look at a lunar eclipse and owe it to \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00cb\u0153Rahu\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2 and \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00cb\u0153Ketu\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2 or whatever dumb story they heard about it. I used to be the one to explain to them the science behind the event and they would either think of me [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8500,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.askiitians.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}