The "Super" Moon

 To the naked eye, it wasn't so "super". A mere 14% larger than normal, you'd never notice any difference if you weren't told. Though the moon was indeed closer to the Earth, by about 15,300 miles, it's really a fairly insignificant difference. The moon is, after all, nearly a quarter million miles away.

 Still, with all the hype, I had to look. And I had to take a few photographs.

 This is what I saw Saturday (05/05/12) at 8:55 pm. To the southeast, the moon had just cleared the distance trees (about a mile off) and by using my telephoto, I could pull the moon into an even more impressive size. The low position of the moon, like the recently set sun behind me, took on a ruddy hue from the thickness of the near-horizon atmosphere.

 In actuality, the scene looked more like this. There's the Shell farm on Venus Road and their barn, to the south and west of the house, offers a nice rural setting.
 In any case, it was a pleasant excuse for spending some time in the front yard, stationed under the pines along Clayton Road, watching the tranquil moon begin to light the night sky. But bigger? Not much. Brighter? Hardly. Still, when I fell to sleep on the living room floor (Mom is ill and I'm caregiver) I watched the shaft of moonlight strike across the carpet and thought of the multitude this night gazing at the super moon.