Pluto put to sleepFollow

Another flaw for the next generations science text books.

Anything to get them to print out a new edition. My son is still being taught that maggots erupt spontaneously from rotted meat.

I've made an informal poll of people I know

"My Very Excellent Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pizzas"

I'd be happier at this point with a story about Uranus.

Greetings, greetings fellow star gazers. This September is very special moonwise because it pays host not only to the closest full Moon of the year but also to the farthest Moon of the year. On top of which you can use September's full Moon to find the most difficult of all to find planets, planet #7 Uranus. Let me show you.

O.K., we've got our skies set up for the official night of September's full Moon, Thursday September 7th facing east about an hour after sunset where you will see a fabulously colorful pumpkin orange huge Moon just risen above the horizon. And believe me it will be huge, not only because it is close to the horizon which makes all full Moons look bigger than when they're overhead but also because it will be the closest full Moon of the year which will make it look almost 14% larger than the farthest full Moon of the year which occurred last February. Indeed on February 13 the Moon was a whopping 252, 332 miles away but next week's full Moon will be over 30,000 miles closer only 222, 012 miles away.

But remember full Moons always look bigger when they're close to the horizon than they do when they are overhead. So although next week's full Moon will look bigger than usual even when it's overhead, nevertheless, it will look its very biggest when it's either rising Thursday evening or setting Friday morning.

On top of which, if you have a pair of binoculars, you can use the full Moon to find the dimmest naked eye planet of them all, 32,000 mile wide Uranus, which just coincidentally next week will be at its closest to Earth for the year, only one and 3/4 billion, miles away. In early evening simply train your binoculars on the Moon and bluish green Uranus will be a tiny dot 7 degrees or 14 full Moon widths up and to the right of it. You'll have to look carefully though because the bright moonlight will be rather overwhelming.

Now some of you may be thinking that since it's September this full Moon should be the Harvest Moon because usually September's full Moon is. But this year is an exception. The Harvest Moon this year will not occur until next month October 6th. You see the official definition of a Harvest Moon is the full Moon that occurs closest to the first day of autumn, the autumnal equinox. This year the autumnal equinox occurs at 12:03 a.m., E.D.T. September 23rd, which means that October's full Moon is 35 hours closer to the equinox than September's. But next week's full Moon will be just as beautiful as any September full Moon, Harvest Moon or not.

So what about September hosting the farthest Moon of the year? Well it occurs on the day before the equinox, the 22nd when the Moon will be new and a whopping 252, 586 miles from Earth. But since it's a new Moon it means it's not visible so you wouldn't know about it unless we told you. So, have fun with next week's super close full Moon, use it to find Uranus and keep looking up!