If your looking at the full moon tonight or tomorrow night, and you think it looks extra "big", you're actually on to something. The moon is actually at it's perigee, which means it's at it's closest point in it's not quite circular orbit. Calculations figure it 12 percent bigger than most of the other full moons of this year.
If you were to compare the full moon of tonight with one when the moon is farthest out from the earth, you could actually see the difference with the naked eye. Remember Mars back in August of 2003? It was close enough for many amateur astronomers (including myself) to make out the polar ice caps on the red planet. This pass of the full moon is similar in that it's actually very noticeable.
(Photo courtesy Don Spain of Louisville Astronomical Society).
-Colonel Steve
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