Did you see the supermoon? From Jochberg (1565m) you could.

So on Monday everybody were exited about the “supermoon”. Apparently the moon did appear larger than it has since the 1940s. It was supposed to be the whole 14% bigger and 30% brighter compared with the smallest full moons. Pay attention to that last fact “compared with the smallest full moons.” In other words it was not THAT big, but I still thought it would be worth taking a step outside to see this supermoon and so at the last-minute, I joined a hike that a friend of mine was organizing. This meant that I had to pack everything the evening before and take it with me to work. I did not even have enough food in the refrigerator to make sandwiches, but once I have decided something, nothing can stop me!

So I packed everything and got up 6:20 to buy some sandwiches from the bakery and get to work early. At 4 a clock I left work and had to get to the other side of Munich, where we were to meet. One hour later we were on our way. Once again I was hiking with new people who I had never met before. This is almost becoming a habit :D. We were a group of five and had a really nice time.

This was also my first winter-night hike in a very long time. I think I did something like this back in Norway but in a much smaller scale.

I must give my friend Anna all the credit for choosing the mountain and planning the hike. I know she put a lot of effort into finding the perfect mountain where we could see the moon. And perfect it was 🙂 .

The hike we did was the following:

Route: Parkplatz am Kesselberg (850 m) – Jochberg (1565 m) – Parkplatz am Kesselberg (850 m).

Time: Estimated time was 2 hours to the top, but we used closer to 1,5h.

Climb: 750m

The drive there from Munich took ca one and half hour. We honestly thought that we would be the only crazy people going hiking in the middle of the night just to see the moon, but when we got there, there were about 4 other cars already parked. Turns out we are not the only ones who had this idea!

We started from the parking lot with lots of layers and headlights. After 10 minutes the layers came off and after 30 minutes we turned off our headlights. It was so snowy and the moon was indeed very bright, so the headlights were not even needed. There was however a lot of fog, so we could not see the moon. At ca. 1400 meters (when the forest ended) we finally walked out of the fog and saw the moon.

So imagine this: you are standing in the snow, under the stars, under a bright moon, you look down into the valley and it is covered with thick soft fog. In the horizon you see all the mountaintops reaching out of the fog. It was amazing.

Tonight, the full moon will appear larger than it has since the 1940s. The moon will appear around 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter compared with the smallest full moons. It will be worth taking a step outside to see this super supermoon.

What is a supermoon, and why does it happen?

The moon’s orbit around Earth is not a perfect circle. It’s an ellipse, a saucer shape that’s longer than it is wide. That means as the moon follows this orbit, it’s sometimes closer to the Earth and sometimes farther away. At perigee, the closest spot in its orbit to the Earth, it’s around 31,068 miles closer to Earth than at apogee, when it’s farthest away.

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Meanwhile, we see different phases of the moon — full, crescent, waxing, and waning gibbous — depending on if the sun-facing side of the moon is facing the Earth.

These two phenomena don’t always match up, but when they do, astronomers call it a perigee full moon (a.k.a. super moon). This occurs about one in every 14 full moons, Jim Lattis, an astronomer at the University of Wisconsin Madison, notes.

Sky and Telescope

To be sure, this isn’t an enormous difference compared with a regular full moon. Neil deGrasse Tyson has called the frenzy around supermoons overblown. “If you have a 16-inch pizza, would you call that a super pizza compared with a 15-inch pizza?” he said on theStarTalk radio show.

Whether or not you’re impressed, it’s a good enough excuse to go outside and marvel at the beauty of the cosmos. Sky and Telescope reports that the night of the 13th or 14th should make for good viewing (perigee will occur at 6:23 am EST on the 14th). But “[t]he tiny difference between the two evenings will be undetectable,” the magazine writes. You may want to try to catch the moon earlier, when it rises (for those of us on the East Coast, around 5:30 pm), because near the horizon, an optical illusion will make the moon appear absolutely huge. Like this:

But why is this supermoon extra special?

The moon will appear slightly larger than it has in decades because of mere chance. The moon will reach fullness just three hours after perigee on November 14. Because perigee and the full moon are so closely timed, this full moon will be the largest (relative to our perspective on Earth) since 1948. The next-closest supermoon will be in 2034, as NASAreports.

Again, though, the differences in size between a really close supermoon and a typical one would be are pretty negligible. The full moon Monday will be just 30 miles closer to Earth than the last record in 1948, National Geographic reports. In astronomical terms, that’s tiny.

The moon will also be a bit brighter than usual — also due to the fact that it will be a bit closer to the Earth.

And if you miss it, fear not. We’re currently in a run of supermoons, and there will be another on December 14 (it won’t be quite as big). After that, we’ll have to wait until December 2017 for the next one.

Correction: This article originally misstated the how the moon’s phases occur. They do not occur due to the moon’s passing in and out of the Earth’s shadow. Rather, they’re due to thechanging angles between the sun, Earth, and moon.

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