The Sky at Night: 50 Things You Never Knew About the Full Moon

[icymist]

1 The full moon is a lunar phase occurring when the moon is on the opposite side of the earth from the sun and all three bodies are aligned in a straight line. Viewed from earth, the near side of the moon is fully illuminated by the sun giving it the familiar circular appearance.

2 It is only during a full moon that the dark side of the moon - the hemisphere on the opposite side to the sun - is completely dark.

3 Lunar eclipses - caused by the passage of the earth's shadow across the illuminated hemisphere - only occur during a full moon. However, because of the angle of tilt of both bodies the moon normally passes either north or south of the earth's shadow.

4 The chances of being bitten by a dog are twice as high during a full moon, according to a study at Bradford Royal Infirmary, which reviewed 1,621 cases of dog bite between 1997 and 1999. However, a study at the University of Sydney in Australia concluded there was no identifiable relationship between the state of the moon and dog bites.

5 Gervaise of Tilbury, a 13th-century canon lawyer, was the first to link the full moon with the transformation into a werewolf. Writing in his Otia Imperialia he reports cases in the Auvergne, below. The philosopher Gottfried Leibniz described the popular work as a "bagful of foolish old woman's tales".

6 The full moon occurs every 29.5 days - the duration of one complete lunar cycle.

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[Ilsa]

1. Did you know that when you are looking at the moon fairly early

in its ascent, and it looks really big, you can look through a toilet paper roll, or some other cylindrical object, and the moon "resizes" itself smaller. The "big moon" phenomenon is quite a visual trickster, isn't it?

Thanks for the post.