Brightest Moon Shines Saturday Night

New Delhi, Jan 31 (IANS) : The evening sky Saturday was lit by the moon shining at its zenith. Being closet to the earth, the moon was seen 15 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter as compared to rest of the year.

"It is beautiful to see the biggest and the brightest moon of the year. We clicked some pictures for our records," said C.B. Devgun, director, SPACE (Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators), a Delhi-based organistion that works toward popularising science and astronomy.

Explaining the reason, he said: "The moon's orbit is an ellipse with one side 50,000 km closer to earth than the other. In the language of astronomy, the two extremes are called 'apogee' (far away) and 'perigee' (nearby).

Full moon in Mangalore

Pictures from Bangalore

"On Jan 30, the moon became full, three hours after reaching perigee, making it bigger and brighter than we are going to see for the rest of 2010."

The moon at perigee will look bigger than it looks in all other positions, as the apparent size of closer objects is always greater.

N.S. Raghunandan Kumar, general secretary of the Planetary Society of India said: "As this is the second full moon of the month, this will also be a blue moon."