Why does the moon sometimes look larger than normal?

Question

Sometimes it looks huge. I think it has something to do with the distance from the horizon and something in the atmosphere, but I'm not really sure.

This evening the moon looked very large, yellow, and bright. It was beautiful and got me wondering...

Answer 1

Its an optical illusion. I didn't know why myself until a couple of weeks ago!

I couldn;t find the article I was looking for on NASA.gov which explained it, but here is another:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1429752/posts

The interesting thing (to me) is that we might perceive it to be bigger near the horizon, but a camera sees it always the same size. So you can try to take a picture of the big moon but the image will appear to be the same as when the moon is high in the sky.

Answer 2

The funny thing is, it is actually larger by a small amount when high in the sky! That this is so is because when the moon is on the horizon it is one earth radius farther away (neglecting any change due to the eccentricity of the orbit of the moon) than when it is directly overhead. And, the difference is not small. The moon is 1/60th times closer when it is at the zenith than on the horizon (4,000 miles/240,000 miles), so it would appear nearly 1.7 percent larger (not enough to detect without a photograph). Actually, both the optical illusion effect and the magnification effect come into play, and they work on the sun, as well. I believe that the magnification effect is more important, because the moon as seen over nearby mountains (not near the horizon if the earth were non-mountainous) does not seem that much larger. But, here again, when it is near the horizon you are only comparing it to a small part of the sky (the earth takes up a larger part of your view), while when high in the sky you see a lot of sky and a much smaller-appearing moon.

Answer 3

it's a full moon closer to the earth

Answer 4

Light bends, like water, or grass. Mass helps the bending, gravity, desity, what have you.

Answer 5

cause we are closer to the moon...some seasons.......