This yearsfirst supermoonwill potentially grace the sky on February 9.
A supermoon is usually defined as the largest full moon possible.
But in reality, supermoonsare not huge at all.
There are in fact countless misunderstandings about the Moon and how it appears in the sky.
Here are five such examples and how to disprove them yourself.
Size comparisons of the Moon for consecutive days and full moons.
And herein lies the misconception.
And even then, the difference is rather small.
We see the same side because the Moon rotates around itself once while it moves once around the Earth.
you might experience this yourself with a simple experiment.
Slowly walk around a chair at home so that you always look directly at it.
If you stop somewhere, you only see one background.
To see all the other parts of the room, you will need to turn around or rotate.
The Moon does the same it moves around the Earth and rotates.
The Earths shadow causes moon phases
Over a month, the Moon shows different phases.
This is sometimes incorrectly explained by the Earths shadow covering parts of the Moon.
But it is rather an issue of how we view the Moon.
Given Earths location, we see different sides of the Moon that are more or less illuminated.
To discover how, put a ball on a wall to represent the Moon and walk around it.
As you have the Sun at your back, you see all of the visible sides illuminated.
When the ball and Sun are in the same direction, we see none of the visible sides illuminated.
Illustration of three moon phases.
But note, for example, the different shape of a waxing crescent to the gibbous moon.
If the Earths shadow were causing this then the planet would have to have a rather odd banana shape.
Phases of a lunar eclipse.
Note how the curvature of the shadow always fits the Earths round shadow.
Daniel Brown
However, there is one exception.
During a lunar eclipse - occurring only at full moon - the Moon actually moves into the Earths shadow.
When it looks like an O it is a round full moon.
However, this sequence has to be inverted to become COD in the southern hemisphere.
The explanation is simple and proves that the Earth is a sphere.
Or, in your frame of reference, the Moon and stars seem to turn upside down.
This means their path indeed moves them from right to left.
But we dont always see it like this because of themoon tilt illusion.
The (enlarged) half-moon in Nottingham, in April 2020.
Changing our position so we see a better projection of the two points gives a more realistic view.
This article is republished fromThe ConversationbyDaniel Brown, Lecturer in Astronomy,Nottingham Trent Universityunder a Creative Commons license.
