[slate]
A supermoon is quite easily the
closest full moon of the year. As we know, the moon's orbit around the
Earth is not a perfect circle. And so sometimes it's closer
to the Earth and sometimes it's further away. And when we get both a full moon and the closest
approach of the moon to the Earth, we get a supermoon.
This is going to be a particularly important supermoon because it'll be the closest the moon has been to the Earth since January
of 1948. And so it should be a spectacular show.
[slate]
You don't have to be out in any particular instant in time to see
this. So any clear night over the weekend and into early next
week you'll be able to see a full moon that's going to be brighter and larger
than the average full moon. The supermoon which itself happens on Monday
will appear to be about 14 percent larger and 30 percent
brighter than the smallest full moon that we get. So really anytime at night
if it's clear, you'll get a spectacular show and you'll get to see our beautiful moon
in the sky.
[slate] Over the seven
years of the life of the LRO mission we've learned a lot about the moon. And I think for me
one of the biggest surprises is how dynamic the moon is.
That we're able to measure the changes that have occurred on the lunar surface
as a result of impact craters that have formed. And that constant bombardment of
the lunar surface actually erodes the surfaces quite faster than we expected
before. Before LRO we thought that the boot prints that the astronauts left
on the moon during the Apollo program would be around for millions of years.
And recent results from LRO show that those boot prints may be erased
much faster, over several tens of thousands of years. So we're learning the moon
is a much more changing place, much more dynamic place than we ever imaged
before. [slate]
[slate] One of the great things about
the moon is that we use it, our understanding of the moon as a cornerstone
for understanding all of the other objects in the solar system. So for instance when we got the
beautiful images of Pluto, we learned that the surface of Pluto has areas that are
very smooth, that have little impact craters on them. Or few impact craters on them.
And so one of the things that we can do is estimate the ages of those surfaces.
It turns out that Pluto has very young surfaces. And the reason that we know that is because of our
studies of the moon. So for any object in the solar system, the basis of
our understanding comes from our knowledge of the moon. And so our continued studying
of the moon tells us more about not only how the moon has evolved, but also how all of the
solar system objects have evolved.
[slate]
To learn more about the LRO mission, you can go to NASA.gov/LRO.
Follow us on Twitter @LRO_NASA.
And of course you can also post pictures of the supermoon using the hashtag
#NASASupermoon.