The moon will be closest at 1.30pm (AEST), at just 356,955km away — one of its closest brushes in 18 years.

Astronomers say the closer moon will cause tides to be higher, but it has never been proven to cause people to act crazily.

The name SuperMoon was coined by astrologer* Richard Nolle in 1979, defined as:
...a new or full moon which occurs with the Moon at or near (within 90% of) its closest approach to Earth in a given orbit (perigee). In short, Earth, Moon and Sun are all in a line, with Moon in its nearest approach to Earth.[5]

The term supermoon is not widely accepted or used within the astronomy or scientific community, who prefer the term perigee-syzygy.[citation needed] Perigee is the point at which the Moon is closest in its orbit to the Earth, and syzygy is a full or new moon, when the Earth, the Moon and the Sun are aligned. Hence, a supermoon can be regarded as a combination of the two, although they do not perfectly coincide each time. Syzygy may occur within a maximum of 12 hours from perigee during a supermoon, and 1 hour from perigee during an extreme supermoon.[5]
(* Please note astrologer - not astronomer. One earns a living flogging horoscopes to the gullible and the other is a scientist.)

Speculative link to natural disasters

Richard Nolle has argued that within ±3 days of a supermoon, the Earth is more subject to natural disasters such as earthquakes and volcanic activity due to the Moon's increased gravitational force.[5] Speculations have moved the goalposts to within 1 or 2 weeks of a supermoon to suggest a causal relationship with specific natural disasters such as the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.[9][10] Such a widening of the effect window is unjustified as in both cases the Moon was farther from the Earth than average, making a supermoon effect impossible.[3]

Some studies have reported a weak correlation between lunar activity and shallow, very low intensity earthquakes. However, no evidence has been found of any correlation with major earthquakes. Unjustified claims that the lunar tides trigger earthquakes are rooted in a lack of appreciation that the stress in the Earth is described by a tensor with six independent parameters and that earthquakes occur as slip on existing, weak fault planes. Any change in stress, by lunar tides, by impounding a reservoir, or by a large nearby earthquake, changes the local stress tensor in specific directions. If one wishes to estimate whether a given change advances or hinders slip on a fault, one has to know the orientation of the fault. It is equally likely that the change of the stress due to the moon clamps the fault shut, rather than advancing slip on it. This is why Ohtake[14] has carefully considered the orientation of the fault planes in earthquakes that he showed were correlated with lunar tides.

The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami is the only earthquake of 8.0 magnitude or greater to have occurred within 2 weeks of the 14 extreme supermoons from 1900 to the present date, suggesting that the claim of a supermoon effect on the incidence of large-scale earthquakes is unjustified.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermoon

As i have said before and will say it again. Only the gullible would take this numpty seriously.

maybe it is true .....

everytime it rolls around , we all get all analytical and post Huge contributions to how absurd it is .....

"madness" is not defined as going to work to do a job for someone you don't like .........

doing it five times a week , 48 weeks a year for 40-50 years is ?!!!!!!

Its the repetition that counts so maybe we should just " link " to previous Threads .... ?

I still chuckle to myself any time someone brings it up , outside this Forum ...
hahahha
Cheers .

Thats because there is a small core of memebers who want to drag us back into medieval science by claiming all sorts of things like super moons, planetary alignments causing earthquakes, astrology as a science etc as being legitimate when they patently aren't.

If you have a theory on anything I am more than happy to debate the merits or otherwise but be aware if yous et out to prove a theory and I discover that it has no merit i will say so loudly.

Look I spent months debating Ken Ring and Aurology and in the end proved beyond a shadow of doubt that they where both shonks with a hidden agenda - that being to flog their brand of bullshit to people via their weather predictions, long range weather forecasts, almanacs and books.

This is a weather forum, not a advertising vehicle for those who make a living fleecing the gullible SO and I object to anyone bringing down the intelligence of people by trying to make it look like Weatherzone is approving their products by allowing them to continue to post.

If I have made even one person doubt what these shonks are selling I would have achieved what I set out to do.

My whole take on the Supermoon influencing earthquakes etc.

Earthquakes happen daily, larger earthquakes also occur on quite a regular basis. I really can't understand how a build up of stress in the mantle is related to the moon being slightly closer than it usually is. I reckon people get so hyped up about the 'supermoon' that they instantly draw correlations between things that aren't even there...

Meh missed it.
Oh well only another 18 years until the next one.

The tides were huge on the weekend where we were camped. They did cause a fair bit of erosion and we lost more of our camping area to beach.

I missed taking pics last night but this one was on Saturday night.

The Super Moon, taken last evening (7May 2012). Taken from the Hume Highway approaching the town of Coolac on the SW Slopes of NSW. Coolac is just north of Gundagai.

Coolac nocturn.



On the Murrumbidgee River floodplain, from North Wagga, to Oura, Wantabadgery and Nangus to Jeringong, it has been very smoky. Every second farmer, grazier or wine producer had fires burning, trying to rid their properties of flood debris. It has been pea-soup fogs to midday and smoke to sunset. I had to work on the moon to shoot it through the smoke. It was so yellow it was not real.

A smoky start to the day, above the Murrumbidgee at Jugiong. Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning?



Warren.

Above I wrote incorrectly typed (after Nangus) Jerringong, but I meant Jugiong. I'm not really that geographically challenged?

Warren.

An old shot taken from the Cotter Road in the ACT ... when the Earth slipped sideways.




Warren.