Supermoon May 2012

Supermoon May 2012, According to NASA’s calculations, 11:34 p.m. EDT Saturday is the moment when the moon will hit your eye like a big pizza pie, to paraphrase Dean Martin. It’s “super moon” time.

NASA is letting its enthusiasm show in a new video on the subject. “The timing is almost perfect,” it notes. At 11:34 (that’s 8:34 p.m. Pacific), May’s full moon will reach perigee — the closest point to Earth in its elliptical pattern — and “only one minute later, the moon will line up with the Earth and the sun to become gloriously full.”

For a bunch of scientists, that’s pretty poetic talk.

The moon will appear 14% larger than other full moons of 2012. “The swollen orb rising in the East at sunset will seem super indeed.”

This doesn’t sound like a super moon — it sounds like a super duper moon.

Anthony Cook, astronomical observer at L.A.’s Griffith Observatory, is a little more measured in his view of the upcoming phenomenon.

It will be 30% brighter, yes, but that’s 30% brighter than the moon is when it is at “apogee” — the farthest point in its elliptical orbit around the Earth — he said. (Los Angeles Times)