It’s supermoon day…
It’s Supermoon Day, ladies and gentlemen — the ‘biggest’ full moon in 68 years. That’s the largest since 1948, ladies and gents: Queen Elizabeth was still a princess, Prince Charles had just been born (today, as matters would have it), and India had been independent for only a year. The moon will reach what’s known as the “crest” of its full phase today at about 3:52pm CLT. Doing the calculation is beyond our mental capacity (at any time of day, let alone at 3am with barely half a cup of coffee in our system), but the basics are that it will appear 14-30% larger than usual tonight. In fact, it won’t appear this large again until 25 November 2034. The Guardian has a very nice explainer, and the image below is by Reuters’ fantastic Amr Abdallah Dalsh, taken last month and used to illustrate a wire piece with a US angle. (Our closet Fenian-tinged Saad Zaghloul will now wallow in guilt as he grapples with the fact that we just used British history as the benchmark for 68 years ago…)