My not so “Super” Moon

Over the weekend there was a bunch of hoopla over the “Super Moon”. While it’s true it’s the biggest full Moon of the year, it really isn’t that much bigger. Visually you can’t even tell the difference People thought it look huge, but that was mostly because they don’t look up very often and see the full Moon every month. All the hype bugged me, but it really shouldn’t have. I guess anything that gets people to look up is a good thing.

Amateur astronomer’s hate full Moons. They are super bright and wash out most of the sky making it harder or impossible to see other objects. It’s also the worst time to photograph the moon. When it’s full you don’t get any shadows and can’t see much detail in the craters.

Here are a few pictures I took of the gibbous Moon last week. You can see more detail in the craters on the side of the Moon that’s shaded. Near the terminator—the line the separates night from day—is always the best place to see crater detail, and you can see on the other side of the Moon very little crater detail is visible. I prefer a crescent Moon, but sometime you have to take what you can get when the clouds are gone.