The not so super Supermoon

Each 29 days the moon rotates around Earth. Moon’s orbit’s not circular, but egg-shaped. So there’s a point at which it’s closest to Earth. This point’s called the lunar perigee. It’s not a fixed distance. On average it’s 364,397 kilometres. But two nights ago it was 356,577 kilometres. This is the closest the moon’s been to Earth since 1993. When one lunar perigee’s in the lowest 10% of the range of all lunar perigees, the moon’s called a Supermoon [1, 2, 3]. When the moon’s at perigee it exerts more gravitational pull, creating higher tides (and a bigger difference between high and low tides). So a Supermoon causes high tides that are slightly higher than normal. And it has some impact on seismic activity due to the stronger gravitational pull between the sun, the moon and Earth. But even so, there’s no clear evidence the Supermoon was a causal factor in the earthquate and tsunami that hit Japan on 11 March – which was eight days before the Supermoon. On 11 March the moon was at an average distance from Earth. The 19 March Supermoon was about 20% brighter and 15% bigger than an average full moon. These increases were insufficient to be noticeable to the casual observer. But that didn’t prevent media hype [4]. I was tempted to look. But the entire time between moonrise at 7:28 p.m. on 19 March and moonset at 6:55 a.m. on 20 March, the Mole Creek sky was in full cloud. Ho hum.

P.S. Still on matters astronomical, happy southern hemisphere autumnal equinox to you.

Review Tuesday: 'From Paris with Love'

Today’s ‘Review Tuesday’. I’ve previously written that all films are one of two types: those you disappear into, and those you grow from [1]. As yesterday’s Farmdoc’s Blog post tells, last week I had a tough week. For DVD night last Saturday, I most definitely needed a film to disappear into. And the Bigpondmovies gods presciently obliged – by sending me the 2010 thriller From Paris With Love [2, 3]. It’s a buddy film [4] starring John Travolta (with shaven head and black goatee and moustache) and the Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers (who, perhaps uncoincidentally, is a dead ringer for the young Johnny Depp). Travolta plays the uncouth hardened crimebuster Charlie Wax, and Meyers his young and naïve partner James Reece. Wax’s mission is to dismantle a terrorist cell. Reece tags along and does what Wax tells him to. The film’s entirely set in Paris, with the locations ranging from the Eiffel Tower café to seedy immigrant apartment blocks. I found it absorbing. It moves at a breathless pace, I like the emerging buddy relationship between Wax and Reece, and the action stunts are worth seeing. Apparently the 56-year-old Travolta did all Wax’s stunts himself. Really impressive. Despite all this, I can’t give From Paris with Love more than three stars out of five. But for me it was a perfect pick-me-up at the end of a difficult and distressing week.

P.S. Happy southern hemisphere spring equinox.