Tonight and tomorrow night, the sky holds a special treat for those who gaze east at sunset. November hosts a supermoon. My friend Georgia, who visited my backyard garden last night, chatting and dining around the fire pit, reciprocated this evening with an invitation to watch the supermoon rise.
Georgia has a new contemporary home just down the street from me. I had the joy and privilege of serving as her realtor on that purchase. Her beautiful house has a loft upstairs that is perfectly situated with large windows that offer an eastern view.
This gracious friend prepared a wonderful chopped veggie salad and had other suitable plant based snacks on hand. Georgia, Greg and I carried plates of food up to the impromptu observation deck, ready to be dazzled by the moon, which tonight was just shy of full.
According to NASA, the moon’s orbit around the Earth is slightly elliptical, so sometimes the moon is closer and sometimes it’s farther away. When the moon is full as it makes its closest pass to Earth, it is known as a supermoon. At perigree—the point at which the moon is closest to Earth—the moon can be as much as 14 percent closer to Earth than at apogee, when the moon is farthest from our planet. The full moon appears that much larger in diameter and 30 percent brighter.
The biggest and brightest supermoon for observers in the United States will be on Monday morning just before dawn.
Because our forecast for today and tomorrow was partly cloudy, we opted to view the supermoon tonight, while we had relatively clear skies. There was a low lying front to the east, however, from our darkened loft we watched appreciatively as the amber colored moon broke free from the haze and climbed into the evening sky.
In my lifetime, I’ve watched many moonrises. It never gets old. Perhaps because my full name, Cynthia, means “moon”, I have always felt an affinity toward the earth’s beautiful natural satellite. This supermoon is the closest one we have had, since 1948. There won’t be another moon that sails this close to the earth until 2034. My phone’s camera couldn’t capture how gorgeous the moon was…but my eyes took it all in and saved it as a memory.
I appreciate my friend and my neighbor, Georgia, for inviting me to share in this once in a lifetime event, from the comfort of her home. I am grateful, too, for the colorful and delicious salad. I’ll be making this tasty meal at home.
Supermoons and superfriends…they inspire me to keep looking up.
