A Syzygy, for you Scrabble players

November 4, 2016 12:28 PM

On November 14 the moon will be closer to the Earth than it has been in 70 years, creating a massive "supermoon."

If you can't be outside on the evening of the 14th, do not despair; the next supermoon will occur on December 14, and the next supermoon of this record-breaking size will occur on November 25, 2034.

There are also some other exciting events in the sky coming up this month, as well.

posted by Mooseli (46 comments total)

M-O-O-N, that spells perigee-syzygy.
posted by mannequito at 12:34 PM on November 4, 2016 [12 favorites]

um, not quite. It was just as close ~28 days ago, and will be again in another 28 days...
It's the closest *FULL* moon. Bit of a difference there.
-sigh- science writing these days . . . : (
posted by cfraenkel at 12:40 PM on November 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

Once, when I tried looking around for a six-letter word with no shorter words that could be made from it, the only one I found was syzygy. (Using the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary).
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 12:52 PM on November 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm going to co-opt these comments for something that bothers me.

Does the moon really look significantly larger for people when it's quite near the horizon? I hear about this illusion a lot, but I go and look at it and it's just "yep, that's about the size of the moon". I don't know what I'm missing.
posted by solarion at 12:55 PM on November 4, 2016

I learned that word from the X-Files.
posted by atoxyl at 1:01 PM on November 4, 2016 [7 favorites]

Super Moon vs. Micro Moon
posted by jamjam at 1:07 PM on November 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

This is at least the third so-called "supermoon" that I've heard about in 2016. Are we just calling every full moon a supermoon now? I'd really like to know.
posted by kevinbelt at 1:08 PM on November 4, 2016 [18 favorites]

Oh boy! Another supermoon! Isn't this about the 24th I've heard about in the past 5 years? I mean seriously!

Does the moon really look significantly larger for people when it's quite near the horizon?

Yes, it does. It's possible that the comparative scale visual cortex parts of your brain are better developed than many, but for most people the moon coming up over the horizon or within 45 minutes of a full rise looks MUCH bigger than the moon at the middle of its arc across the night sky.
posted by hippybear at 1:08 PM on November 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

Great birthday present for me! Thanks, moon!
posted by rachaelfaith at 1:09 PM on November 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

I learned that word from The Three-Body Problem. The syzygy scene from the novel was bleakly hilarious. DEHYDRATE!
posted by infinitewindow at 1:09 PM on November 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

The Superest Moon is when the Moon does a song. Jupiter ain't got one.

But since I've got enough notice this time I can actually make plans to get my stargazing telescope out and go someplace dark for this. Thanks for the heads up!
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 1:17 PM on November 4, 2016

Jupiter ain't got one.

What you talkin' about, Willis?
posted by hippybear at 1:20 PM on November 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

10 days from now? No sweat, I know a guy who can take care of a giant moon situation in less than three days, tops.
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:26 PM on November 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

atoxyl I learned exsanguination from the x-files; a great word!
posted by supermedusa at 1:31 PM on November 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

This is at least the third so-called "supermoon" that I've heard about in 2016. Are we just calling every full moon a supermoon now? I'd really like to know.


Is it only the third? Seem to be getting close to a couple dozen in what seems like the last year or so.
posted by humboldt32 at 1:43 PM on November 4, 2016

Once, when I tried looking around for a six-letter word with no shorter words that could be made from it, the only one I found was syzygy

As I mentioned once before on the blue, I have learned that if your first three plays in Hangman are 'rhythm', 'syzygy', and 'cwm', you will not be invited for a fourth round.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:04 PM on November 4, 2016 [11 favorites]

I, uh, learned the word "syzygy" from Thirteen Means Magic, the first book in Eve Becker's Abracadabra series.

That book is also responsible for my learning how to move my eyebrows independently from each other.
posted by asperity at 2:48 PM on November 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

Obligatory Perry Bible Fellowship.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:49 PM on November 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

for once I get to do it! RELEVANT XKCD
posted by numaner at 3:27 PM on November 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

Avid Scrabble player reporting for duty!

I'll pencil the 14th in my calendar and try to find a nice place to take a few photos of the supermoon. Thanks for the heads up!
posted by syzygy at 3:38 PM on November 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

Thanks, moon!

Thmoon?
posted by dabug at 3:46 PM on November 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

We have the technology, the time is now. We can wait no longer. America can, should, must and will blow up the moon!

And we'll be doing it during a full moon so we make sure we get it all.
posted by JoeBlubaugh at 4:24 PM on November 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

So I'm gonna be That Guy.

The whole Supermoon thing bugs me more than it should. It's a term coined by an astrologer and picked up by the mass media. It means nothing.

Tape a dime to the wall. Stand six and a half feet away. There is your normal full Moon. Now step six inches closer. There is your Super Moon. Does it look any bigger? No. Sure, technically it's larger, but not enough to really notice if it wasn't pointed out to them.

Yet people will look at the full Moon on the 14th and tell all their friends how big it was, and the media will make a big deal out of it, and everyone will yap and yap about the Supermoon.

The full Moon is beautiful. Everyone should spend time looking at it, so if this "event" gets people out to look at the Moon, I suppose that's a good thing. People will probably look at it early in the night, when it's low on the horizon, when it actually does seem larger (but actually isn't) due to an illusion. And they will insist that the Supermoon is a real thing that makes the moon so much larger and when I'm That Guy who tells them the thing about the dime they're going to go tell me to stick my head in a pig, and probably rightly so.

So I've learned, for the most part, to just keep my big fat yapper shut about it and let them have their fun.

But I wish they'd just enjoy the full Moon because it's beautiful, not they're led to believe it's something it isn't.
posted by bondcliff at 4:26 PM on November 4, 2016 [28 favorites]

I know the word "Syzygy" for its brief role in videogame history as the original name for Atari.

And agreed that I'm oversaturated with supermoons. Call me when it looks like this.
posted by Nelson at 4:27 PM on November 4, 2016

if you can spell S-y-z-y-g-y in Scrabble, your game has been spiked.
posted by Namlit at 4:41 PM on November 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

It'll be closer than it's been in 70 years. Couldn't care less how many times the word is used - this fact has me excited about taking a moment to look at the full moon at even just a slightly bigger size. I can think of worse outcomes from a lurid lede. The moon's always a joy to look at; I just like the reminders of the time scale these bodies operate under, the cycles of even greater scale they travel through. It's humbling, and fascinating.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 4:54 PM on November 4, 2016 [8 favorites]

I, too, am That Guy, bondcliff. My stat-bringing is that the moon is ~300,000km away. With these 'supermoons', it's ~300km closer(pretty sure), and that's not a jump it made overnight.
Also, think the moon is big? You can totally obscure it with your pinky nail! Think your eye's blind-spot is small? It's 100 full moons! Also, no dark side sorry.
posted by quinndexter at 5:32 PM on November 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

Supermoons mean higher than normal king tides.
posted by adamg at 8:14 PM on November 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

So I've learned, for the most part, to just keep my big fat yapper shut about it and let them have their fun.

I learned long ago that nobody really looks at the sky. A lot of those UFO's you hear about? Normal everyday stuff that's just rare enough that nobody recognizes it when it happens and they catch a glimpse for whatever reason. I've seen most of the stuff on this site just by paying attention and knowing what to look for. Halos and northern lights are up there so often and people go about their lives without noticing. It's weird.
posted by traveler_ at 10:46 PM on November 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Hell, I've heard that a double-digit percentage of people don't realize you can see the moon during the day.
posted by Mitrovarr at 11:21 PM on November 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

I just came here to also say x-files x-files x-files
posted by fairlynearlyready at 12:12 AM on November 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

My favorite astrological event of the last 2 years was when Jupiter was right next to the half moon in the daytime sky & if you knew where to look, you could see the planet in the broad daylight. I brought binoculars to work & we all looked at lunch.

I feel like I can tell the difference between a full moon at perigee vs apogee, but it is something like 6% bigger or smaller, more or less- so no, not some massive incursion of a celestial body into FAA airspace, & the term "supermoon" is a bit overwrought.
posted by Devils Rancher at 4:13 AM on November 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

2 Blank tiles + S + Y +Z + G. Is this the Royal Flush of scrabble?
posted by Nanukthedog at 4:17 AM on November 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

So the consensus is that it isn't a "super" moon, but as moons go it's a pretty good one?
posted by TedW at 5:04 AM on November 5, 2016

Bondcliff, go stick your head in a pig.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:55 AM on November 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

Hey, the moon looks huge from in here!
posted by bondcliff at 7:00 AM on November 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

Hell, I've heard that a double-digit percentage of people don't realize you can see the moon during the day.

I can confirm this. I encounter it every time I teach Intro Astronomy. Based on anonymous polling, there are at least 3-4 people in any class of 24 who will insist that the Moon can only be seen at night. If possible, I try to schedule the first day we talk about the Moon on the day when the Moon is up, during the day, during class. I've blown more than a few minds this way. The weather often doesn't cooperate, but...

Does the moon really look significantly larger for people when it's quite near the horizon?

The Moon Illusion is fascinating.
posted by BrashTech at 7:22 AM on November 5, 2016

Tape a dime to the wall. Stand six and a half feet away. There is your normal full Moon. Now step six inches closer. There is your Super Moon.

I want to take a moment to appreciate that you didn't just make up random numbers for your analogy. A dime 6.5 feet away takes up 0.5° of one's visual field, just like the moon!
posted by aws17576 at 9:09 AM on November 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

CHA
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:56 AM on November 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm surprised this is sitting freely available on the internet, my favorite story by Italo Calvino, "The distance of the moon".
posted by acrasis at 10:13 AM on November 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

personally I learned the word syzygy from last season of Teen Wolf (or whichever was the dread doctors one)

PERIGEE SYZYGY
posted by Gymnopedist at 2:50 PM on November 5, 2016

One reason I moved to to my town is that the sky is still dark enough for the full moon to be really lovely and bright. We occasionally see the Milky Way, and the stars are still stunning on a clear night. Every article about a supermoon should mention that the overabundance of night lighting is unneccesary and spoils the night sky.
posted by theora55 at 6:06 PM on November 5, 2016

Hell, I've heard that a double-digit percentage of people don't realize you can see the moon during the day.

I can confirm this. I encounter it every time I teach Intro Astronomy. Based on anonymous polling, there are at least 3-4 people in any class of 24 who will insist that the Moon can only be seen at night.

Well, then, how come the sun never comes out at night? Answer me that, perfesser!
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:45 PM on November 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

how come the sun never comes out at night?
I know, right? We don't need it during the day-it's light enough. If it came at out night when we could use the light- boom- global productivity doubles overnight.
posted by quinndexter at 2:07 AM on November 6, 2016

Waxing Moon.

I liked to coordinate my back country trips in the Sierras to around the second week of the new Moon. Sunset each day finds Moon a little higher, a little fatter, until the evening of full Moon, when she rises just at sunset, round, bright--a sort of balancing metaphor using the setting sun as ballast. Shafts of light, shine through tall pines and cedars. Canyon walls sparkle. Beginning at the new Moon, I gain a bit more light each evening. Late encampments are a bit easier to accomplish when Moonlight graces the area.

It's said you can read a newspaper by the full Moon's light, though I never brought one with me to test the theory. The full Moon sets just at dawn, at sunrise--the other part of the metaphor with the sun.

Waning Moon.

Moon rises half an hour or so later each day--these are nights, goes the old saying, that are darkest before the dawn. The waning Moon is usually visible for most of the day, but every day she slips over the western horizon increasingly earlier in the afternoon.

Your lying eyes cause you to think that Moon moves from east to west--like the sun--but this isn't so, it's just Mother Nature's way of getting you to pay attention by screwing with you. Moon actually follows the Earth's spin. We overtake her a bit more every day. Mother Nature is quirky that way; for example, unless you lie on your back on a clear night and let your head go soft, you'll always think the stars are all happening now, instead of twenty or thirty million years ago, where time is measured in miles or kilometers, and distance is measured in time.

Super moon, every time.
posted by mule98J at 8:34 AM on November 6, 2016

We saw the moon on our way home from the planetarium (of all places!) tonight, just before it's full, and whoa, legit supermoon, not oversold, A+++ would observe again! It was huuuuuuuge and ridiculously bright!

We went out to take pictures after dinner but the clouds had come up by then so all I got was the spooky supermoon.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:12 PM on November 13, 2016