Photo from Wikipedia, courtesy of Luc Viatour.

I remembered this fact…. but still, the moon DID SEEM to be larger. Hmmm. It must be my imagination.

The next day, I read a news story about the “Super Moon.”

The moon IS larger!

As a matter of fact, what we saw was the rising of the impending “Super Moon”! Up, up, and away!

A Super Moon is when the moon is closest to the earth. The moon does not orbit the earth in a perfect circle, it’s more like a oval-shaped ellipse. Which means that at some point in its orbit, the moon draws slightly nearer to the earth. This is the “perigee,” the point where the moon is closest to us in its orbit. I think that’s pretty neat!

So tonight (Saturday night) at about 7pm, the moon will be SO CLOSE you could TOUCH it! Well, haha, not that close…. the moon is generally about 235,000 miles away. On Saturday night, it will be only about 221,000 miles away. The Super Moon will be 14% larger in our sky, and 30% brighter.

According to the weather prophets, the skies will be clear here in the Northeast (that in of itself is a miracle) so we can see the Super Moon in all its splendor.

“Distant star Betelgeuse will UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES explode in 2012! Definitely not!!”
But scientists say star could explode at any time….
:duncehat:

Oooookkkkk…. so they are absolutely sure the star will not explode in 2012. Why? Well, because the Mayans said that the end of the world was slated for 2012! Because there are people who believe that 2012 is marked as the “doomsday year”! Tut tut, scientists says, what a bunch of superstitious sillies! they say. But….. they also say that the explosion could be ANY time– right NOW or 100,000 years from now. But DEFINITELY not in 2012? Any time except then?

Well, THAT sounds like hype, if you ask me. That’s a kind of ANTI-doomsday hype, if you ask me. lol. Who says that’s not just as bad? ;)

In case you missed the news, there’s some star in the constellation of Orion that is showing signs of exploding. It’s the star Betelgeuse, much larger than our sun, that’s running out of steam. The explosion (if it happens, no one is sure that this will even happen) apparently will not affect the Earth very much, it’s too far way. Experts calculate Betelgeuse is 640 light years away (although they are not sure) and it has a mass about 5 to 10 solar masses… well, no maybe more like 18… or maybe 20 (they’re not sure)… and the star appears to be losing mass (although they’re not sure if it really is because they can’t seem to figure out the original mass to begin with)…. ACTUALLY, no one is sure of anything. EXCEPT that this event will NOT occur in 2012. That’s an absolute.

But one of these days, POW! Right in the kisser! Betelgeuse will explode. When it does (if it does), the star will eventually appear as large as the moon in our sky, radiating a light about as dim as the moon.

Wow, that’s pretty cool. IF it happens.

So the obvious question is “Well, when will it happen?” And the scientists say, “Well, we don’t know when. It might go up tonight, or it could be 100,000 years from now.” And when asked if it will happen in 2012, some scientists exclaim, “Definitely not then!”

All silliness aside, I think this is all pretty cool. I like stargazing, and if Betelgeuse explodes in my lifetime, that would be some PRETTY cool stargazing. I mean, HOW OFTEN do we stargazers get a star coming right at us? When was the last time that happened, 4 BC or 6 BC when the Magi from the East followed the star to see the Christ? Cool!

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By the way, everyone seems to have their own style of pronunciation for the name “Betelgeuse.” Most seem to pronounce it “BEE-tell-juice.” I prefer “BAY-tell-juice.” It seems to be spelled that way. (Plus, I’m no fan of Tim Burton). Our language butchers terms for astronomy, anyway– who made up the pronunciations, teenaged boys? Take the planet Uranus, for example. When I was in school, it was pronounced the proper way, YOOR-uh-nus. But all the boys snickered every time they heard it, and would pronounce it the *wrong* way, much to the chagrin of the teacher (and the rest of the class). Now, every where I go, people pronounce it the *wrong* teenaged-boy way, as if this is standard pronunciation. Ur doin it rong!

In other astronomy news, there’s an amazing converging of the moon, Jupiter, and Venus this week. The big show was last night. They are so beautiful, shining like glimmering diamond rings.

This converging won’t happen again until 2052. I probably won’t be here for that, lol. Venus and Jupiter are going to come back into this position in 2011 and 2012, but without the moon. Amazing! You can read more about that here.