Help! Tonights Moon, October 2, 2009

[lunarmagic]

I live in Orange County, California. I've never seen the moon as bright as tonight. I called my daughter who was at a friends and told her to go look at it. While I was on the phone with her, I noticed the moon appeared to be shaking and moving around. While noticing this, she started to raise her voice saying that the moon was shaking around......did anyone else notice this tonight?

 

[MeteorWayne]

Welcome to Space.com.

There's nothing particularly unusual about the current moon. Full Moon is about 2 days away, it's about average distance, so not much unusual. This is the Harvest Moon, which means the moon rises very close to the time of sunset for aboyt 5 days, but that's about it.

As for the moon shaking, nope There aren'y many bright stars nearby, so that makes it hard to judge position very well (It was in the circlet of Pisces, all of those stars would be invisible with a near full moon on top of them)

As for the brightness, perhaps the smoke from the firs was blowing inland so you got some really clear skies for a change?

MW

 

[lunarmagic]

There were hundreds of people on twitter last night commenting on the brightness of the moon and some comments about the moon moving quickly. It looked like it was going to burst last night. It was just amazing!

 

[origin]

There were hundreds of people on twitter last night commenting on the brightness of the moon and some comments about the moon moving quickly. It looked like it was going to burst last night. It was just amazing!

Looks like hundreds of people that never bothered to look at the moon with more than a glance, noticed a normal visual affect and thought it was something special. :roll:

 

[crazyeddie]

I live in Orange County, California. I've never seen the moon as bright as tonight. I called my daughter who was at a friends and told her to go look at it. While I was on the phone with her, I noticed the moon appeared to be shaking and moving around. While noticing this, she started to raise her voice saying that the moon was shaking around......did anyone else notice this tonight?

Your post reminded me of this famous short story by Larry Niven, "Inconstant Moon":

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/adam.milne ... t_moon.htm

A really, really bright moon might be cause to worry......