Astronomy picture of the day 14-08-2014 - Surreal moon

Surreal Moon
Image Credit &Copyright: Jerry Lodriguss (Catching the Light)

Explanation: Big, bright, and beautiful, a Full Moon near perigee, the closest point in itselliptical orbitaroundour fair planet, rose on August 10.This remarkable picture records the scenewith a dreamlike quality from the east coast of the United States. The picture is actually a composite of 10 digital frames made with exposures from 1/500th second to 1 second long, preserving contrast and detail over a much wider than normalrange of brightness. At a perigee distance of a mere 356,896 kilometers, August's Full Moon was the closest, and so the largest and most super, of the three Full Moons nearest perigee in 2014 now popularlyknown as supermoons. But if you missed August's super supermoon, the next not-quite-so supermoon will be September 8. Then, near the full lunar phase theMoon's perigee will be a slightly more distant 358,387 kilometers.That's onlyabout 0.4 percent less super (farther and smaller) than the super supermoon.