Pink Supermoon

So this week like most other weeks since the outbreak of the Corona Virus 19 (CoVid19; and doesn’t that sound really harmless?) there seems to be virtually nothing other than news stories regarding the outbreak and its effects around the world. Finding a news article that doesn’t mention the virus is like finding a needle in a haystack, and finding a news story that doesn’t involve doom and gloom of some sort, as well as not mentioning the virus is like finding a Paraiba Tourmaline (a very rare gem stone) in a haystack.

Well it seems that one of the biggest things that happened outside of the virus is a ‘pink’ supermoon last Tuesday or Wednesday (depending on which article you read). But even in this article the Corona Virus made an appearance and therefore lending the whole article a rather sad tone overall. According to the article a supermoon happens when the moon comes 10 percent closer to the Earth than normal, meaning that it essentially looks bigger to us when we see it. There are several different times when this phenomenon occurs throughout the year, the one that I remember the best being the Full Moon Festival or rather the Mid-Autumn Festival held in Hong Kong as well as other areas in Asia. The name for this particular supermoon stems from the pink flowers that start blooming around this time of the year, though the article doesn’t mention what kind of flowers these are though they apparently grow in fields.

April’s full moon will be the closest supermoon of 2020, and it is also known as the “pink moon” after the pink flowers that start to appear in the fields this month in some places.

Another article gave more information on the subject of the supermoon, and said that meteorologists believe that this time round the supermoon will be even more spectacular than normal since there is a lot less air pollution around and because of the clear weather forecast. This article also goes on to mention that the moon’s orbit isn’t round but instead more of an oval, which means that this is the closes the moon will come this year and it will be 14 percent larger than normal. In the extensive article it even mentions the origins of the supermoons name which apparently comes from the Native Americans spring phlox flowers which are pink in colour.

It has plenty of other names too — the Egg Moon, Full Sprouting Grass Moon, Growing Moon and Full Fish Moon — all reflecting different seasonal markers from around the world.

Overall there is a massive different in information regarding the supermoon between the two articles mentioned in this blog post; one is mostly the bare bones of what is happening and the other has a lot more detail in it for readers to consume. I suppose that it depends on what they want to read, but for myself I much prefer the second article because it tells me a lot more about the supermoon as well as including interesting diagrams that visually show what is happening. I find it interesting to learn more about a certain subject and enjoy it when the article has the information already there instead of expecting me to go search for it somewhere online, but again this is personal preference.