Super-Sized Moon Takes Over Saturday Sky

For those who howl at a full moon, start exercising those vocal chords because Saturday's full moon will be super-sized.

“It’s going to be a very bright, very big looking moon. It’s worth people going outside and see the difference (between a typical full moon,)” says Karl von Ahnen, technical director at Fujitsu Planetarium at De Anza College.

Moonrise over Los Altos Hills, where the Foothill College's Observatory coincidentally has its free Fridays, is expected at 8 p.m., and moonset at 5:35 a.m. Sunday.

Von Ahnen says it will appear about 15 percent brighter than a typical full moon and will appear larger-looking.

“It’s special, astronomically.”

The super moon is due to a combination of the moon’s elliptical orbit around Earth and the time at which it is at its closest point to us—called perigee—occurring at the same time as the full moon cycle. Typically the two occur a day or so apart, but this one is happening at the same time.

“It’s very unique,” he says. “Each of these motions is independent.”

Often there is a moon illusion phenomenon, von Ahnen says, that happens when the moon shows near something like a mountain and gives it the appearance of being larger, but it isn’t actually closer to our planet. It’s kind of a psychological trick on the eye, he says.

But there is a public phenomenon in recent years that is troubling, NPR reported.

Andrew Fraknoi, at Foothill College astronomy instructor and senior educator at the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, says it used to be that events like supermoons and planetary conjunctions were nothing but fun, interesting events. "But now more and more, I think partly because of tabloid television, when something is happening in the sky, it leads people to be afraid. Astronomer David Morrison has coined this new phrase called 'cosmophobia.' "

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