Saturday evening, the phone rang at about 10:30 PM. It was those pesky neighbors calling to tell me to walk outside and take pictures of the moon. Seriously.
I obeyed, but really had no clue why they’d given the order, all I got from the short conversations was that the moon was closer to the earth right then than it would be again in my lifetime, and detailed instructions on where I could find it. “Go out your front door and look to the southeast!” Heh. I’m one of those people who then go, “Ok… lemme think… Seymour is north. And west is on my left…” I wasted some valuable moon time when it would’ve been quicker to just simply go outside and look up.
But then, I couldn’t find my plate for the tripod — and of course, when you take photos in the dark with your shutter open wide, you must hold very, very still or you get nothing but blur. To keep from getting in trouble by the peskies… I just did the best I could.
The Associated Press reported the supermoon was at its most super at 11:34 PM EST, when it was about 221,802 miles away from earth. That’s about 15,300 miles closer than average, making the moon appear about 14% bigger than it would appear if it were at its farthest distance during its elliptical orbit.