Sometimes you can't believe your eyes. This weekend is one of those times. On Saturday night, June 30th, step outside at sunset and look around. You'll see a giant moon rising in the east. It looks like Earth's moon with the usual craters and seas, but something's wrong. This full moon is strangely inflated. It's huge!
You've just experienced the Moon Illusion. Sky watchers have known for thousands of years that low-hanging moons look unnaturally big. Cameras don't see it, but human eyes do; it's a genuine illusion.
Above: A time-lapse sequence of the moon rising over Seattle. To the camera, the moon appears to be the same size no matter what its location on the sky. Credit and copyright: Shay Stephens.
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Summer Moon Illusion from NASA
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Labels: Moon, NASA
On Tuesday morning, Aug. 28th, Earth's shadow settled across the Moon for a 90-minute total eclipse: full story. In the midst of the lunar darkness, Cooke tries to record flashes of light - explosions caused by meteoroids crashing into the Moon and blasting themselves to smithereens.
Lunar explosions are nothing new. Cooke's team has been monitoring the Moon since late 2005 and they've recorded 62 impacts so far. "Meteoroids that hit Earth disintegrate in the atmosphere, producing a harmless streak of light. But the Moon has no atmosphere, so 'lunar meteors' plunge into the ground," he says. Typical strikes release as much energy as 100 kg of TNT, gouging craters several meters wide and producing bursts of light bright enough to be seen 240,000 miles away on Earth through ordinary backyard telescopes.
"About half of the impacts we see come from regular meteor showers like the Perseids and Leonids," said team-member Danielle Moser. "The other half are 'sporadic' meteors associated with no particular asteroid or comet."
Read more on "Exploding Eclipse" from NASA