Supermoon, Full Moon, Equinox? Check out this space infographic below for explanation. Catch the ‘Super Equinox Full Moon’ visible the whole night from Brunei Darussalam on 20th (Wednesday) and 21st (Thursday) March 2019.
Supermoon occurs on Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 2:37 am at its closest distance (Perigee) of 359 345 km to Earth. The moon will be slightly bigger than a normal moon, but only by a few percents.
Spring Equinox occurs on Thursday, March 21, 2019 at 5:59 am. The sun rises exactly due East and sets due West. Day and night have the same length.
Full Moon occurs on Thursday, March 21, 2019 at 9:43 am. On this day, Earth is between the moon and the sun, and the moon is visible during the whole night.
Bandar Seri Begawan – An unusual full moon light “hypnotised” many skywatchers to a rare celestial display around the world including Brunei Darussalam on Tuesday night, 19 Feb 2019.
The super moon was the biggest and brightest in 2019 because its orbit is at its closest to earth or at perigee at around 356,800km.
At such shortest distance, the Earth’s only natural satellite appeared nearly 30% brighter and almost 14% bigger than a typical full moon. Some effects of the moon’s gravitational pull at our oceans was more pronounced than other times of the month, generating higher than normal high tides or Spring Tides.
Below, some of the best shots of it from around the Sultanate.
Bandar Seri Begawan – There is another chance to break the national record for the youngest moon crescent on June 14, 2018 during the upcoming moon crescent observation for Syawal 1439H.
See explanation below:
Infographic of Syawal 1439H New Moon Sighting
Reminder: This is only a computational analysis data. The result/declaration of the sighting will be announced through official media by the government.
petapixel.com – It’s amazing the kinds of space photos that amateur photographers can create from their own backyards these days. Case in point: the high-resolution moon photo above was captured last week by Polish photographer Bartosz Wojczyński. It was stacked together using 32000 separate photos.
Wojczyński tells us that he used “advanced image acquisition and processing techniques,” mapping violet and infrared images of the moon to blue and red channels in the final shot.
It took him about 28 minutes to shoot 32000 photos weighing 73.5 gigabytes using his ZWO ASI174MM monochrome camera, a couple of filters, his Sky-Watcher HEQ5 mount, and his Celestron C9.25 telescope (which is equivalent to a 2350mm f/10 camera lens) — equipment that cost him about $3500 total.
The photography was done from the balcony of his apartment in Piekary Śląskie, Poland:
After the thousands of images were captured, Wojczyński spent 5-6 hours processing and stacking the images together into the 14 megapixel final image. Click here to see the original image in all its full-res glory. Here are some crops showing the details of the photo:
“Thanks to the enhanced coloration, it’s possible to examine the differences in the chemical composition of the lunar surface,” Wojczyński tells us. “For example, the bluish tint of several areas indicates a titanium-rich soil.”
P.S. Wojczyński is the same photographer that made the six-hour exposure of the celestial north pole that we featured last month.
Skyandtelescope.com – April 22, 2015. Walk in the astronauts’ footsteps as you explore the places they visited in the heyday of Apollo program. Use these helpful maps to start you on your way.
We all love dark moonless skies, but let’s face it, the Moon’s out two weeks a month. How can you ignore it? You’ve doubtless observed craters and mountain ranges and probed for volcanic features like rills and domes. But here and there among the nooks and crannies, you’ll find six of the most remarkable locales on the Moon — the Apollo landing sites. They’re the only places where humanity has achieved one of its oldest dreams and “touched the stars”.
Six Apollo missions successfully landed on and departed from the Moon between July 1969 and December 1972. Top, clockwise: James Irwin salutes the flag at Hadley Rill; Harrison Schmitt collects rock samples in the Taurus-Littrow Valley; Buzz Aldrin’s footprint in the lunar regolith; Charlie Duke placed a photo of his family on the Moon and took a picture of it; Edgar Mitchell photographs the desolate landscape of the Fra Mauro highlands; and Pete Conrad jiggles the Surveyor 3 probe to see how firmly it’s situated. NASA, collage by Bob King
As you’re well aware, no telescope on Earth can see the leftover descent stages of the Apollo Lunar Modules or anything else Apollo-related. Not even the Hubble Space Telescope can discern evidence of the Apollo landings. The laws of optics define its limits.
Following are maps for pinpointing each Apollo location. South is up, and clicking on the images will link you to higher resolution versions. Time to strap on your boots and follow in the footsteps of the first people to walk on the Moon.
Photos of each of the six Apollo landing sites photographed from low orbit by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. ALSEP stands for Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package. The astronauts’ tracks as well as the rover and other items are plainly visible. Click for a large version. NASA / LRO
Hubble’s 94.5-inch mirror has a resolution of 0.024″ in ultraviolet light, which translates to 141 feet (43 meters) at the Moon’s distance. In visible light, it’s 0.05″, or closer to 300 feet. Given that the largest piece of equipment left on the Moon after each mission was the 17.9-foot-high by 14-foot-wide Lunar Module, you can see the problem.
Did I say problem? No problem for NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which can dip as low as 31 miles (50 km) from the lunar surface, close enough to image each landing site in remarkable detail.
LRO’s orbital imagery and photos taken in situ by the Apollo astronauts will serve to illuminate our ramblings from one Apollo site to the next. All the landing sites lie on the near side of the Moon and were chosen to explore different geologic terrains. Astronauts bagged 842 pounds (382 kg) of Moon rocks, which represented everything from mare basalts to ancient highland rocks to impact-shattered rocks called breccias. Apollo 12 astronauts even found the first meteorite ever discovered on another world, the Bench Crater carbonaceous chondrite. – See more at:
With the Moon waxing this week and next, the advancing line of lunar sunrise will expose one site after another beginning with Apollo 17 in the Moon’s eastern hemisphere and finishing with Apollos 12 and 14 in the western. To see each locale, a 4-inch or larger telescope magnifying 75× or higher will get the job done. But the larger the scope and higher the power, the closer you’ll be able to pinpoint each landing site and better able to visualize the scene.
All the landing sites can be found using these five prominent lunar craters. North is up in this view.Credit: NASA/LRO
The base images for all the sites are photographs taken by the LRO. I encourage you to drop by the ACT-REACT QuickMap site, which features a zoomable lunar map of LRO photos that will practically take you down to the lunar surface. Click the “paper stack” icon and uncheck Sunlit Region to see a fully-illuminated Moon, no matter the current phase. Checking the Nomenclature box will bring up the names of craters, rills and many other features. More details about each of the LRO Apollo photos can be found here.
Apollo 11 landed on July 20, 1969, on the relatively smooth and safe terrain of the Sea of Tranquility. For an extra challenge, see if you can spot the three craters named for the Apollo 11 astronauts just north of the landing site. They range from 2.9 miles (Armstrong) to 1.5 miles (Collins) across. NASA / LRO
Pete Conrad and Alan Bean achieved a pinpoint landing on Nov. 19, 1969, in the Ocean of Storms south of the grand rayed crater Copernicus, landing within walking distance of the Surveyor 3 probe. NASA / LRO
Apollo 14 touched down on Feb. 5, 1971, in the Fra Mauro formation. Somewhere in the scene are two golf balls hit by Alan Shepard with a makeshift club he brought from Earth. NASA / LRO
James Irwin and David Scott spent three days alongside Hadley Rille in the rugged Apennine Mountains after landing Apollo 15 on July 30, 1971. This was the first mission to use the Lunar Rover, greatly expanding the amount of ground the astronauts could cover. NASA / LRO
Apollo 16 touched down in the lunar highlands on April 21, 1972, in the Cayley Formation, where astronauts John Young and Charles Duke hoped to find older Moon rocks than those previously found near the younger maria. NASA / LRO
Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan landed the final Apollo mission in the Taurus-Littrow Valley on Dec. 11, 1972. The astronauts once again searched for ancient highland material. In the process, they broke a rear fender on the lunar rover and re-attached it using maps and duct tape. Credit: NASA/LRO
Bandar Seri Begawan – Look west in twilight on February 20 and 21 as two planets, Venus and Mars, appear close one another in the sky and will be accompanied by the thin moon crescent. The celestial phenomena known as conjunctions occur when celestial bodies have the same right ascension or the same ecliptic longitude as seen from the Earth. While it would be very low in the twilight sky, it might be an interesting photo opportunity. Venus will be shining bright in the west after sunset and sky gazers can locate Mars as they are separated within 1 degree apart. If the weather cooperates, it could be a spectacular image.
