Tonight: Year's Biggest Full Moon, Mars Create Sky Show

Tonight: Year's Biggest Full Moon, Mars Create Sky Show

news.nationalgeographic.com

The biggest full moon of 2010 will rise in the east tonight, and it'll appear with a bright sidekick: Mars will cozy up just to the left of the supersize moon.

January's full moon is also called the wolf moon, according to Native American tradition associating this month's full moon with wolves howling in the cold midwinter.

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A full moon hangs over Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

he 2010 wolf moon will appear 30 percent brighter and 14 percent larger than any other full moon this year, because our cosmic neighbor will actually be closer to Earth than usual.

The moon will be at its closest perigee—the nearest it gets to our planet during its egg-shaped orbit—for 2010 at 4:04 a.m. ET Saturday, reaching a distance of 221,577 miles (356,593 kilometers) from Earth.

What a beautiful moon. Watch out for those werewolves tonight
That's not all..there's a double whammy!!

And in a remarkable coincidence, Mars is at opposition tonight—directly opposite to the sun in the sky—so that as the sun sets in the southwest, Mars rises in the northeast.

Around opposition, the red planet gets closest to Earth. This year Mars swung by at just 61 million miles (98 million kilometers) on January 27, and it will still appear remarkably bright during tonight's sky show.

"To the naked eye it will appear as a bright, orange-colored star right next to the full moon—the pair will jump out at you for sure," Jobin said.

Both Mars and Moon can be viewed tonight!

news.nationalgeographic.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Thanks for the quick posting!

One of my dogs is a wolf/German shepherd mix. Tonight will be her night!

Go, Sami! We'll watch it together with the other ATS stargazers...

Well, IM taking my telescope out tonight!!!

Good post!

SWEET ! I have nothing to do tonight! Im gonna take my telescope to the beach , and take a packed dinner , and OMG ITS GONNA BE AWESOME ! Im not suprised by this , last night I walked home and the moon was so damned bright I was sort of thinking "Ya know, at this time of night , we could probably just turn the streetlamps off !"

S&F for bringing this to my attention!!

Wasn't this supposed to happen last night though and NOT tonight

Sorry to post that but i thought you should know

Well it says it was going to happen "tonight" on that article and it was posted on the 29th and today it the 30th so i assume it was meant for yesterday.

I'm in Australia and i can tell you that the moon is really bright tonight, brighter than what it was last night, very nice if you have a telescope.

Hmm. New photo(SNATCH). Thanks for the New Avatar!

Here in Vegas, its really cloudy. But the moon lit them clouds up and it was really bright out. Good stuff!


Edit- Changed my mind, RP is my new avatar =)

[edit on 30-1-2010 by Common Good]

We have the full moon here in Australia right now.. it is very bright and a warm summer night... cloudless sky. Perfect!

IRM