May 22, 2013
It's not your average full moon that will be in the sky Saturday night. It will actually be a "super moon".
The moon's orbit around the earth happens every month, but this month is special because the moon is closest on it's orbit to the earth's surface. Also Saturday night is the full moon so with these to factors coinciding, Saturday night's full moon will be the largest and brightest full moon in 18 years.
Professor Lauren Likkel from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UW-Eau Claire told us what to expect.
"The moon is going to be like 16% bigger in the sky, and it will be 10% brighter, so it will be technically bigger and brighter.
She says that won't be enough to really see a difference between the super moon and the usual full moon.
In any case people around town are curious and want to try to catch a glimpse of the super moon.
Meanwhile, there has been some concern whether the full moon being so close to earth could cause any flooding due to higher tides. Even worse, there are some who believe it could cause more earth quakes like the one that devastated part of Japan last week.
Professor Likkel says "All the studies I have seen, there is no link between earthquakes and how close the earth is to the moon. She added, "I would expect there would be more extreme tides, every full moon there is and sometimes when it's closer, but there shouldn't be any flooding. It's not going to be such an unusual high tide that people on the coasts are going to have to take any precautions.
Saturday night there is a free talk at Hobbs Observatory starting at 8pm where afterwords you can look through the telescope at the night sky.
If you want to try and catch the super moon Saturday night, you may want to do it earlier in the night around sunset because we are predicting increasing clouds throughout Saturday evening.
