I thought the meteor shower was good last night, about 100 per hour for the
whole sky. The trails were short  due to the meteors heading straight at
us. They were bright and slow. Ahaa- and 31 degrees F my glasses kept fogging.

I was going to let this big bright full moon business ride, but I got 7
forwards and a Chatt. Times call. I agree with the 3 planetarium directors
below, enjoy. Oh, I turned The Times artical to light pollution; watch for
the misquotes in the sunday paper. ;)
>
>stargazer wrote:
>>
>> > This combo of a Full Moon, winter solstice, and moon at perigee has not
>> > occurred since 1866, according to the Old Farmer's Almanac.
>>
>> Sheesh...I wish that when folks made much ado about something, it wouldn't
>> be nothing!  Silly little things like this get all the attention, while the
>> more interesting celestial events get swept under the rug!
>Kind of reminds me of the much-ado-about-nothing flap earlier this year about
>Blue Moons.
>
>Patrick  :-)
>
>--
>Patrick Wiggins
>Hansen Planetarium Education Department
>email: [log in to unmask]

>
>I got to wondering just how different this full moon of December would look
>to people in our area.  The numbers that follow are for Lafayette,
>Louisiana, but they would be easy to determine for other places.  I assumed
>that people would be looking at the moon at the convenient time of 8 PM on
>the night closest to the instant of full moon, and got those instants from
>the Astronomical Almanac.  The apparent diameters of the moon were obtained
>from "The_Sky" software, and the apparent magnitudes were obtained from
>"Voyager for the Mac."
>
>The difference in apparent size between the December and November full
>moons this year will amount to about 2 seconds of arc.  I doubt that anyone
>can see that small a difference, particularly when relying on their month
>old memory of the November full moon.  The difference in apparent size
>between the December full moon and the May full moon (the smallest one of
>1999, I believe) is only about 4 minutes of arc, about half the distance
>separating Alcor and Mizar.  Although this is certainly detectable by the
>human eye, I doubt that it would be noticeable when relying on the 7 month
>old memory of the May full moon.  It seems to me that anyone who thinks the
>December full moon looks remarkably larger than usual is using more
>imagination than anything else.
>
>The apparent magnitude of the moon on December 22 is given as -13.1.  The
>apparent magnitude of the November full moon is given as... -13.1.  Again,
>it would appear that people remarking on the extraordinary brightness of
>the December full moon will be fooling themselves.  The apparent magnitude
>of the May full moon is listed as -12.8. While the difference in magnitudes
>between the May and December full moons would be noticeable if they were
>side by side, I wonder if people's memories of the May full moon will truly
>allow them to notice.
>
>Maybe part of our role in this bright moon business should be to point out
>that the December full moon will not be noticeably bigger or brighter to
>the unaided eye than the November full moon, and this this event will be
>more hype than spectacle.
>
>Dave Hostetter
>Curator of the Planetarium
>Lafayette (LA) Natural History Museum & Planetarium
>

>
>About the Solstice full moon,
>I've been getting a flurry of inquiries about the validity of this event.
>I can confirm the fact the full Moon is on solstice and I believe
>most of the info regarding perigees and tides, so it will be an
>especially bright full moon.  However, I must cast a suspicious eye
>towards the two assertions near the end of the Farmers Almanac web
>page
>><http://www.almanac.com/preview2000/lunar.html
>>
>
>Namely:
>"...your car's headlights -- may seem superfluous."
>and
>"on the night of December 21, 1866, the Lakota Sioux staged a
>devastating retaliatory ambush of soldiers in the Wyoming Territory
>-- perhaps planning the attack for that bright night, whose lunar
>confluence was identical to this year's."
>
>The first encourages reckless driving, with many people wanting to
>"try" the strategy of turning off headlights, and the second, well I
>believe Dakota Indians might have timed attacks for full moons, but I
>do not at the moment believe they kept track of the exact brightness
>of full moons or knew of the pattern associated with perigee cycles.
>That would require a lot more convincing for me.
>
>Many thanks to Mike Shanahan for identifying the source of these
>inquiries (Farmers Almanac)!
>
>--Alan Gould
>Planetarium Director
>University of California
>Lawrence Hall of Science
>Berkeley, California 94720-5200
>[log in to unmask]
>510-643-5082



Bobby Thompson
Labs and Observatory
Physics, Geology, and Astronomy Dept.
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
http://www.utc.edu/~jonesobs