A Full Perigee Moon rose as the Sun set last Sunday. At its closest to Earth it was, by just a bit, the year’s brightest and largest Full Moon also known as a Super Moon. Seen from Punta Piedras, Argentina and the mouth of the Rio de La Plata, near Buenos Aires, the Super Moon’s light created this magnificent circular lunar halo.
Pluto’s newly discovered moons now have names. Known previously as P4 and P5, the International Astronomical Union has now given the fourth and fifth discovered moons of Pluto the namesKerberos and Styx. The small moons were discovered in 2011 and 2012 by the Hubble Space Telescope in preparation for the close passing of the New Horizons spacecraft by Pluto in 2015. Keberos is named for the many headed dog in Greek mythology that guards the entrance to the underworld, while Styx is named for the goddess who overlooks the mythological river that runs between the Earth and the underworld.
This visualization shows the Moon’s phase and libration at hourly intervals throughout 2013, as viewed from the southern hemisphere. Each frame represents one hour. In addition, this visualization shows the Moon’s orbit position, sub-Earth and subsolar points, and distance from the Earth at true scale.
What lies at the bottom of Hyperion’s strange craters? Nobody’s sure. To help find out, the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn swooped past the sponge-textured moon in 2005 and2010 and took images of unprecedented detail. An image from the 2005 pass, shown above in false color, shows a remarkable world strewn with strange craters and a generally odd surface.
Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, 1968. That evening, the astronauts–Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders–held a live broadcast from lunar orbit, in which they showed pictures of the Earth and moon as seen from their spacecraft. Said Lovell, “The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth.” They ended the broadcast with the crew taking turns reading from the book of Genesis.
The full Moon of June 23, 2013 was the largest Moon of the year. This so-called “Super Moon” was at perigee — or at its closest point in its orbit to Earth, and was 14% bigger and 30% brighter than other full Moons of 2013.