<b>Millennium's Last Full Moon Should Be A Beaut </b>

Millennium's Last Full Moon Should Be A Beaut

December 17, 1999
Web posted at: 1:51 p.m. EST (1851 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The final full moon of the millennium comes December 22 on the first day of winter and during the closest lunar approach to the Earth, but the combination is not as rare as some people have thought, experts say.

Sky and Telescope magazine reports on its Web site that people have been sending e-mail and faxes insisting that the combination of closeness to Earth and the winter solstice will make next Wednesday's full moon the brightest in more than a century.

Not so, says Roger W. Sinnott, associate editor of the magazine.

Approximately the same combination of things happened in December 1991, and it was very close to the same in December 1980. Furthermore, the full moon passed nearer to the Earth in 1930 and 1912 than in this year, Sky & Telescope says. "This is a cool combination of things and the poet in me loves it," Sten Oldenwald, an astronomer who works for Raytheon at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said in an interview Thursday. "But it is not particularly rare."

The winter solstice, which occurs when the tilt of the Earth's axis puts the sun directly over the Tropic of Capricorn, comes every December. It marks the first day of winter. Oldenwald said it is not unusual for the full moon to come within 24 hours of the solstice. Perigee, when the moon is closest to the Earth, also happens quite often in December, he said. "About every 10 years or so you will get approximately this combination," he said. "It will happen five to seven times in a lifetime." The full moon on Wednesday will be at its closest approach to Earth in about 70 years, but it will take an exceedingly sharp eye to spot any difference from an average full moon, Oldenwald said. The moon makes an elliptical orbit of the Earth, ranging on average from about 227,000 miles away at the closest to about 254,000 miles at the farthest. On Wednesday night, the full moon will be 221,620 miles from Earth.

In January, 1930, the full moon perigee was about 160 miles closer, according to Sky & Telescope. The magazine said the record closeness for a full moon was on January 4, 1912, when the lunar sphere was 221,447 miles from Earth.

"The full moon would have been about 25 percent brighter than average in 1912," said Oldenwald, "but I doubt that you could have told the difference with the naked eye."

People living near the ocean may notice that the tides may run slightly higher than normal on Wednesday because of the perigee full moon, said Oldenwald. But even that is not unusual. "Beach front property owners should be attuned to it," said Oldenwald. "If you live on the beach and you remember 1991 when this last happened, well it is going to happen again."