Pink supermoon

I always note that I’m not really an astrophotographer, and this is readily apparent to anyone who sees my shots, but I do occasionally like to take a snap just to prove I was there. Thus, here’s my photo of the full Moon of April 7, 2020.

There are those who call this the pink Moon, even though it isn’t pink, and a supermoon, which may be an exaggeration even though the Moon is excellent. I’ve read a few sources this morning claiming that we “often” call the April full Moon the “Grass Moon” or the “Egg Moon.” This may well depend on just how you define often.

The super bit comes from the fact that this particular Moon does appear to be slightly larger in the sky–about seven percent bigger than the average full Moon. That’s because the moment of fullness came when the Moon was near perigee, its closest point to Earth during its orbit around us.

For those into photo specs, I made this with a simple Canon PowerShot A530 pointed through the eyepiece of my 8-inch Dobsonian at 50x magnification.

The Moon will be pretty close to full this evening and almost as super, so check it out if you can.