What is a micromoon?

What is a micromoon?




 What is a micromoon?


  How fancy the word micromoon is, its meaning is also that fancy.

  Micromoon is just a full moon that occurs at moon's apogee position, it's farthest position in the orbit around the Earth. As a result, the full moon appears smaller and dimmer like never before!

  Essentially micromoon can be thought as the opposite of a supermoon. Although a Supermoon is up to 14% larger and 30% brighter than a Micro Moon.

  In case you are interested, the full moon cycle is the period between alignments of the lunar perigee with the sun and the earth, which is about about 411.8 days. With some simple math, it's been calculated that approximately every 14th Full Moon will be a micromoon. However, there may be as many as three micromoons per full moon cycle since halfway through the cycle the Full Moon will be close to apogee, and the New Moons immediately before and after can be micromoons.

  Since a micromoon is farther from Earth than a non-Micro Moon, the combined effect of the Sun and Moon on the Earth’s oceans is at its weakest point. In general, the tide is greatest when the Moon is either a New Moon or a Full Moon, so a Micro Moon makes it just a little bit weaker. However, even at this powerful point, the force is still relatively weak, causing tidal differences of inches at most.

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