Has anyone ever seen a 'super-sized' Moon?

The reason I ask is as follows.

It was the mid to late-1980's and I was only a few years old. We lived in London and could see the centre of the city from my parents bedroom. I remember going into their bedroom, looking out the window and there was this absolutely huge Moon hanging in the night sky towards the centre-left. Frankly, it terrified me and I cowered in fear at the sight of it. To put it in perspective, it was something like 20x its normal size.

A few hours later, my baby brother and my mum came home. By that time, the Moon had moved clockwise across the sky and you could now see it around 90 degrees from where it was. I grabbed my brother and we went to the bathroom. I told him to look out of the window and we both stared at it in amazement. I still felt scared but thought it was a natural occurrence for some reason since my parents never mentioned it to us.

We still talk about it today, 25 years after it happened. I've run numerous Google searches that have proved fruitless but I know what I saw. I'm just wondering if anyone else saw it as well? And if so, was there an explanation for it? I've read up about 'Super Moons' but it's not the same thing since I've seen a 'Super Moon' and it was nowhere near as big as the one I saw 25+ years ago.

I recently started thinking that it may have been related to the Chernobyl disaster somehow but I can't find anyone else reporting that the radioactive cloud acted as some sort of 'magnifying glass' for celestial objects.

I didn't exist in the 80s, but a few years ago I remember coming home from something with my brother, and we went around a turn in the road and right in front of us was the biggest moon I've ever seen. I thought it was a large, strange building at first.

Moon looking big is illusion. When moon is very low, it may appear large as your eyes and brain try to compare it against the environment. And if moon is close to Earth, it may appear even larger in illusion.

Its called Moon illusion:
en.wikipedia.org...

When Moon is at its closest point to Earth, it may appear 14% bigger as when its at furthest point.


life-equals-jesus.org...

The moon never changes sizes. Your brain requires context to make sense of what it sees. A low moon is given the context of the terrain to juxtpose. A high moon is up there all alone, and it looks smaller by contrast.

a reply to: JasonT
Orbitally, the Moon is roughly 385,000 km away, however the orbit is not circular, but an ellipse, so this is an average figure. Difference between when it is closest (its perigree), to when it is furthest away (its apogee) is about 55,000 km. This equates to approximately 12% difference in the size of the moon.

There is some lensing that happens when we see the moon low on our horizon, through the curvature of the atmosphere.

Because it is so far away, the 'stereo vision' we normally use to judge distance, is ineffective.

This means that we use other objects to compare the size of the moon with, a factor which can give vast variations in perceived size.

Consider the moon high in an open sky. It looks small against the expanse of the stars. If we then consider the moon compared with a tree line, or the horizon, it looks larger because we see how much of the treeline or horizon it would cover. Compared against a very close window that only reveals a very small portion of the sky, it could look positively huge.

If all three of these factors were combined (at perigee in orbit, low on the horizon and framed by a near-field window, then the moon may well seem unnaturally large.

Moon appears bigger because of our perception. Especially when we add time to memory.

You can a get a big moon effect. Look at it thru binoculars when its on the horizon. Its Huuuge!



link

I saw a massive full moon August 19th, 2005. Rising over the Delaware river so it looked pretty damn cool

Yeah, I saw the moon behind a church at the end of the street near our house. It was so big it went around the whole church, which had a bell tower on it and was a big old church. I ran into the house to get the camera, no film, dug in a drawer, got film, loaded the camera, and went back outside to see my sister shaking her head. It had shrunk down to a normal harvest moon in the five minutes I was inside.

How long did your supersized moon last?

Thanks for the replies.

- It wasn't the 'Moon Illusion' because the moon wasn't on the horizon.

- It lasted at least several hours.

I'm going to try and draw some rough pictures of what it looked like. I am usually critical of such things and would normally dismiss it as the overactive imagination of a young boy but my little brother saw it too.

i had the moon attack me once. must've been a ufo or something cause it was all white.

originally posted by: nrd101
i had the moon attack me once. must've been a ufo or something cause it was all white.

Gru shrunk the moon so he could steal it!

I too have seen the moon looking way to big. I was riding in a truck with my sister driving and a few miles from my house I couldn't wait to get home to get my camera and take a picture of it I have never seen it so big in all my life I'm 55 now and thinking it must have been at lest 15 years ago.Well as we got to my house it just did not look the same it was just a regular size moon and I never even got my camera.But still now i can remember how striking it was I mean it was huge like you said like 20 times bigger than normal, never saw anything like it.

Yes I have and will haunt me for ever ...I was 10 years old at the beach , a women in got up in front of me got up to go into the water... her bikini bottom slipped off... shae had to weigh at least 250 pounds...Yes I saw a giant moon and I hope to never see on like that again. A true story!

a reply to: JasonT


I believe it was around 1988 . I was living in Southend on sea at the time . thousands gathered at the peir to look at it as it was huge . it looked like it was going to hit us it was that big . never seen it the same since...

A moon inside the moon a reply to: JasonT