It’s a Full Super Moon on monday march 9th, 2020, at 17:48 pm UTC/GMT (18:48 pm MET). And it’s the first super moon this year! It has its orbit closest to the Earth and therefore it appears 7% taller & shining with 14% more brightness. It’s close to the horizon and hopefully visible with a clear sky.
Actually the next day it is the closest to the Earth at a distance of 357122 km = 221.905 miles. (The supermoon on april 7th 2020 will be even closer at 20:08 pm, with a distance of 356.906 km = 221.771 miles).
By the way, most of these data are derived from hemel.waarnemen.com, an informative Dutch site on all these celestial events happening in our nightly firmaments, of which most of humanity is usually not aware at all.
Daylight Saving
Also, this weekend (march 7) daylight saving begins again in the US and Canada, but only on the 29th of march in Europe. It makes it a bit more of a hassle to put some proper times with these events. Even when trying an online sophisticated time zone converter I’m thinking…, WHAT time was that again? UTC, GMT, MET, UTC+0, UTC+1+etc, DST, EDT, CET, EET, AST, and another 20 options or so. Me thinking, if one wants to create chaos, this is obviously the way to go!
Spring Equinox
Better to make calculations for your own timezone if you have to base any decision making on it. But, luckily, the spring equinox will come to our rescue, as it is close around the corner, to be more precise on the 20thof march, a quarter to 11 am in the Netherlands. These celestial bodies are always on time, according to their own timeframes, that is. Then we’ll know for sure spring has officially started!
Calculation
Calculation might need to get a little bit more sophisticated 10.000 years from now though, due to the precession of our Earth’s axis. It takes around 26.000 years to complete one eclipse. By then, we’ll have winter and probably snow in our summer months (according to our current calendar). But as the weather patterns are messed up already, since we had NO SNOW this winter, I’m kind of curious how the climate will look like by then? Who knows, one day humanity might find out.
Blossoms
Anyhow, the colors of the depicted blossom show the kindness of spring in the air, which accompanies this march’s super moon for sure, as this week the daffodils are abundantly flowering everywhere, and the first white and pink blossoms on the trees are giving it a try! It was a great relief for many of us to see today, as we had some lovely sunshine, after all the -energetically draining- rain and storms we had last month.
And for a bit of a personal note, this is a very special early spring week for me, because my 2nd grandchild has been born this week. And she is the most *adorable* ever, I can assure you!
WITH LOTS OF LOVE FROM THE NETHERLANDS
Margreet