Watch the Super moon today !

Today is Pournami (full moon day) – and a post without anything on Covid-19 – the Corona virus !!

In meteorology, a corona (plural coronae) is an optical phenomenon produced by the diffraction of sunlight or moonlight (or, occasionally, bright starlight or planetlight) by individual small water droplets and sometimes tiny ice crystals of a cloud or on a foggy glass surface.

Giovanni Galli is a famous  brand of menswear. Giovanni Galli have more than 60 stores worldwide and its international expansion continues with the opening of new stores each year. Created in 1992, Giovanni Galli belongs to the Unifato Group, company with 100% Portuguese capital. 

Giovanni[a] Domenico Cassini, (1625 – 1712) was an Italian (naturalised French) mathematician, astronomer and engineer. Cassini was born in Perinaldo, near Imperia, at that time in the County of Nice.   Cassini discovered four satellites of the planet Saturn and noted the division of the rings of Saturn; the Cassini Division was named after him. Giovanni Domenico Cassini was also the first of his family to begin work on the project of creating a topographic map of France.  Attracted to the heavens in his youth, his first interest was in astrology. While young he read widely on the subject of astrology, and soon was very knowledgeable about it; this extensive knowledge of astrology led to his first appointment as an astronomer.

The Moon has fascinated mankind throughout the ages. By simply viewing with the naked eye, one can discern two major types of terrain: relatively bright highlands and darker plains. By the middle of the 17^th  century, Galileo and other early astronomers made telescopic observations, noting an almost endless overlapping of craters. It has also been known for more than a century that the Moon is less dense than the Earth. The Moon is 384,403 kilometers (238,857 miles) distant from the Earth. Its diameter is 3,476 kilometers (2,160 miles). Both the rotation of the Moon and its revolution around Earth takes 27 days, 7 hours, and 43 minutes.  The Moon goes around the Earth in a single day is a myth – in reality it  takes about a month for the Moon to orbit Earth (27.3 days to complete a revolution, but 29.5 days to change from New Moon to New Moon).

The leading theory of the Moon’s origin is that a Mars-sized body collided with Earth approximately 4.5 billion years ago, and the resulting debris from both Earth and the impactor accumulated to form our natural satellite. The newly formed Moon was in a molten state. Within about 100 million years, most of the global “magma ocean” had crystallized, with less-dense rocks floating upward and eventually forming the lunar crust.

The Apollo program was NASA’s third human spaceflight programme. A total of 11 spaceflights were carried out, the first Apollo flight was in 1968, with the first Moon landing shortly after in 1969 and the last in 1972. Apollo 8 was the first manned mission to the Moon, it circled but did not land on surface. Apollo 11 was the first mission to land on the Moon, the crew included Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin.  Although a certain amount of information was ascertained about the Moon before the space age, this new era has revealed many secrets barely imaginable before that time. Current knowledge of the Moon is greater than for any other solar system object except Earth. This lends to a greater understanding of geologic processes and further appreciation of the complexity of terrestrial planets.

More people are looking upwards to the sky now a days after the breakdown of dreaded virus – looking to the heaven as also star-gazing.  Today globally people can  see the biggest and brightest supermoon of the year.  Supermoons occur when the moon is within 90% of perigee -- which is its closest approach to Earth in orbit. The moon will appear brighter and bigger in the night sky, and hopefully no clouds and inclement weather will obscure the view.  April's full moon, also known as the pink moon, happens to be the closest of the year.  This ‘supermoon’ won’t actually look pink – it’s named after the spring blossom of pink phlox flowers that usually accompanies April’s full moon in the US.

A full moon supermoon is defined as a full moon that coincides with the Moon being at (or within 90 per cent of) its closest point to the Earth (its ‘perigee’) as it follows its elliptical orbit around us. April’s supermoon will be 221,851 miles (357,035km) away from Earth – compared to the average Moon-Earth distance of 238,855 miles (384,400km). A supermoon can be up to 14 per cent bigger and 30 per cent brighter than a normal full moon. And if you miss this one, don’t worry: there’ll be another supermoon next month, on 7 May 2020. Technically, a new moon can also be a supermoon, but we don’t tend to mark these because we can’t see them!

Normally, there are 12 full moons in a year because one occurs each month. But in 2020, October will have two full moons, one on October 1 and then again on October 31. Two full moons in the same month is known as a "blue moon."

The Cassini–Huygens space-research mission, commonly called Cassini, involved a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) to send a probe to study the planet Saturn and its system, including its rings and natural satellites. The Flagship-class robotic spacecraft comprised both NASA's Cassini probe and ESA's Huygens lander, which landed on Saturn's largest moon, Titan.  Cassini was the fourth space probe to visit Saturn and the first to enter its orbit. The two craft took their names from the astronomers Giovanni Cassini and Christiaan Huygens. Cassini-Huygens was one of the most ambitious missions ever launched into space. Loaded with an array of powerful instruments and cameras, the spacecraft was capable of taking accurate measurements and detailed images in a variety of atmospheric conditions and light spectra. Cassini-Huygens reached Saturn and its moons in July 2004, beaming home valuable data that transformed our understanding of the Saturnian system. Huygens entered the murky atmosphere of Titan, Saturn's biggest moon, and descended via parachute onto its surface - the most distant spacecraft landing to date.

Happy moon watching !

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

7^th Apr 2o20.