Moon at annual perigee this weekend

Close approach of the moon?

I'll just take my hat off, then.

So what

There's perigees many months of the year. We're gardening using an astrological calendar and will be leaving well alone on Sunday and Monday.

Confused (what else is new?)

The moon has a perigee once a month, and once a year* this roughly coincides with a full moon, when the effects of lunar and solar gravity are aligned. So (ever so slightly) higher tides than a normal high tide that happens every two weeks. But does the tidal effect from the Sun's gravity also compress the lunar orbit to produce a marginally closer perigee than the one that occurred last month? And is this greater than the companion effect that should happen when perigee closely coincides with the new moon?

* The alignment of the perigee is fixed as Earth follows its orbit around the Sun.

Any news...

on increased werewolf activity???

That's no moon....

FTFY

"If you stumble out of the pub this weekend and the moon appears unusually large, there's no need to swear off the strong stuff." It'll be an optical illusions and in no way related to the full moon.

Only very slightly different?

We're supposed to be impressed with a tiny percentage difference to what's usual?

What's that in English money?

356,953 km ??? I remember whenit was always about 240,000 miles.

Statistics...

"the NASA video below says that tides will rise only a few centimetres and that there's no link between increases in crime and close moon approaches."

That's because NASA are ignoring the effect of tidal forces on statistics. Our base reference is pulled out of whack by the moon's gravity. If you think about it, all our mountains shrink at high tide, right? We measure our mountains by height *above sea level*, after all.

Now if tides do the same thing to our base reference of crime statistics, then a "no change" is actually an increase proportionally equal to the tidal distance, thus explaining the disparity between NASAs view and popular perception.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Moooooonnnnn!

How many are tempted to join in when falling out of said hostelry?

Ful moon

>While some say that these close approaches, or "supermoons" as some insist on calling them, produce odd behaviour, monster tides, earthquakes and other phenomena

Odd behaviour? Regularly driving around Madrid, although the standard of driving is incredibly bad, I can always tell when there is a full moon as the increase in suicidal manouvres is quite noticeable.