Supermoon rising over Newcastle

Introduction

The photograph on this page of Supermoon rising over Newcastle by Andrew Curtis as part of the Geograph project.

The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.

There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk

Supermoon rising over Newcastle

Image: © Andrew Curtis Taken: 27 Sep 2015

The full Moon on the night of 27th September 2015 was particularly bright because it came relatively close to the Earth in its elliptical orbit (perigee) making it appear 14% larger in diameter. The moon appears reddish in this photo taken just after 7pm as it is close to the horizon and seen through the Earth' atmosphere and a few wispy high clouds. The combination of the supermoon with a full eclipse which was to take place in another few hours this same night Image and Image is a fairly unusual event which has only occurred 5 times since 1900. The last was in 1982 and the next will take place in 2033. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150927.html The Moon illusion is an optical illusion which causes the Moon to appear larger near the horizon than it does higher up in the sky. Although the atmosphere does change the perceived colour of the Moon, there is no real magnification effect as was once believed. In fact, the visual image of the moon is about 1.5% smaller when it is near the horizon than when it is high in the sky, because it is further away by nearly one Earth radius. The explanation of the illusion is still debated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_illusion

Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0

Image Location

coordinates on a map icon
Latitude
54.992739
Longitude
-1.799132