Has any one seen how large the moon looks tonite?
962897
The moon is gorgeous. I love the moon. It is so mystical and romantic.
823013
It's an optical illusion.  When the Moon is low on the horizon, we can easily compare its size with the size of familiar things like trees and buildings, while when it is high in the sky we can't compare it as easily.\n\nTo prove this to yourself, the next time you see the Moon, hold your pinky finger up at arms length to "cover" the Moon, and you'll notice it covers the Moon quite easily.  Make a mental note of the size of your little finger compared to the size of the Moon.  Now the next time you see the Moon look huge along the horizon, do the pinky thing again, and you'll notice it's really the same size as before.
909206
It's new moon.... actually right now it's only 1% full. Wait till tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, beautiful sight, a thin sliver... gorgeous. Enjoy!
543648
Oh no, you've figured out my hoax!!! You busted me, you're right, its not round. Sorry, I get silly sometimes. If you are at a position when the moon passes directly perpendicular to you relative to the sun's position then you will see a perfect half lit moon. you can simulate this with a big right triangle by taking a golf ball or some other ball and placing it at the  90 degree corner and placing a flashlight at one of the other corners pointing directly at the ball. Now line up your sight from the third corner and you should see a perfect half lit ball. :)
13214
No the resolution is not high enough but nasa is planning a satellite to orbit the moon that can take very close up pics and show where they are.
869305
The appearance of the Moon is also dependent on the fact the the Earth is rotating on its axis. Objects appear at the horizon, drift overhead and slip below the horizon again. that is the main reason the Moon looks as it does.\n\n;-D The Moon is romantic! Let's not forget that!
785520
go to http://moon.google.com and zoom in all the way.  you'll see what our moon is made of.
47103
It is presumed that we perceive the sun/moon larger near the horizon because its in close proximity to buildings and other frames of reference, and our eyes compare the size of the moon to the buildings and other horizon features. \n\nUp in the sky, there is no frame of reference, and without it, the moon appears smaller.
113023
It is just an optical illusion. Your brain apparently compares the moon (and the sun) with familiar objects around it and that makes it appear larger. If you took pictures and measured, you would see that there is no difference (we had to do this in school in grade 8, and there definitely is no size difference). \n\nThere are refraction effects when the moon and the sun is low in the horizon that distort their shape so they do not look spherical, or are no longer simply connected, or exhibit green flashes etc. But the size does not vary appreciably if they are high enough in the sky to be seen as circular disks.
462021
It doesn't GET any bigger than it is, it just LOOKS bigger because it really IS nearer\n\nBecause its distance from the earth varies as the orbit is not a circle, as you asssume, but an ellipse (oval).\n\nThe furthest distance from the earth that the moon reaches in any orbit (lunar month) is called the APOGEE and the nearest distance it approaches in that orbit is the PERIGEE.\n\nIn the table below the distances are in kilometres, measured from the centre of the earth to the centre of the moon.\n\nJust gone:\n\nMar 13  APOGEE 406272 km \nMar 28  PERIGEE 359169 km\n\nComing up soon:\n    \nApr  9 APOGEE 405549 km    \nApr 25 PERIGEE 363735 km  \n\nThe earth's orbit round the Sun is an ellipse too, and the nearest distance in any one orbit (year) is called PERIHELION and the furthest distance in that orbit is called APHELION.\n\nHelios is the Greek word for the sun and Peri- and Ap- are prefixes meaning near to and far from. The sun looks correspondingly smaller at aphelion and larger at perihelion.  \n\nSometimes eclipses of the sun are not quite total if the sun is bigger than usual (near or at perihelion) and the moon smaller than usual (near or at apogee).\n\nThere is a more pronounced variation in the distance between Earth and Mars than either the variation in Sun-Earth or Earth-Moon distances. Mars looks a lot brighter and a lot dimmer as a consequence, at these times.\n\nTo visualise why, think of a clock face. The sun is in the middle of the dial. The earth is on the tip of the hour hand and Mars is on the tip of the minute hand. When the time on the clock face is midnight, five past one, ten past two etc earth and Mars are at their closest. When the time on the clock face is 12.33, 1.37, 2.43 etc Earth and Mars are at their furtherst apart, Mars being the radius of an earth orbit plus the radius of a Mars orbit away, beyond the Sun.\n\n(This too-simple model assumes circles not ellipses and assumes that Mars years are twelve Earth years, where in reality Mars years are only about twice an Earth year. But it gives you a general idea.)
826033
If you want additional information you will have better luck looking up formation of the moon rather than "moon split."  \n\nHere is the seminal paper supporting this hypothesis with a robust computer model.\n\nhttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WGF-45N4TKM-26&_coverDate=02%2F29%2F1996&_alid=491949780&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_cdi=6821&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=182356e6b7c7f44dd9327d9e5d126f17\n\nThe publisher insists on keeping even this 10 year old publication for sale only.  Still, you can glean a lot from the free abstract.\n\n(P.S. I knew Robin Canup in grad school.  This was her PhD project!)
974494
Actually the Moon is a rather poor reflector, with only 7% of light hitting it being reflected.  That is defined as an albedo of 7.  Earth by contrast has an albedo of 35, the increase being due to ice caps and clouds being extremely good reflectors.  Since the Earth is about 4 times the size of the Moon, its surface area is about 16 times as great.  With an albedo 5X greater than the Moon's and a surface 16X the Moon's, at comparable distances Earth is 90 times brighter than the Moon.  One deep space probe actually looked back and photographed the two together, and the Moon is barely visible in the original photo.
604451
The full moon is visible as full anywhere\non earth where it is above the horizon...\nobviously if it is far in the southern\nhemisphere and you are far north, like\nin northern Finland, you may not see the\nfull moon at all... (but if you could it\nwould still appear full)
500831
http://www.almanac.com/astronomy/moon/index.php\n\nits waxing
424768
It looks like that because of the refraction of light through moisture in the atmosphere. What you are seeing is really just water in our atmosphere difusing the sunlight reflected by the moon.
529765
I can't give any explanation to your question, but I've had a similar experience some 9 yrs before. I was studying for my college exams that time and I came out to the terrace to relax. It was about 4am and the moon was going down. Suddenly it started to decrease in size just like during an eclipse - but only much faster and finally vanished.\nI asked about it to my Professor who said it couldnot've happened.\nNow, atleast I know somebody who have had a similar experience.
562255
Physical Characteristics\n\nThe study of the moon's surface increased with the invention of the telescope by Galileo in 1610 and culminated in 1969 when the first human actually set foot on the moon's surface. The physical characteristics and surface of the moon thus have been studied telescopically, photographically, and more recently by instruments carried by manned and unmanned spacecraft (see space exploration). The moon's diameter is about 2,160 mi (3,476 km), somewhat more than 1/4 the earth's diameter. The moon has about 1/81 the mass of the earth and is 3/5 as dense. On the moon's surface the force of gravitation is about 1/6 that on earth. It has been established that the moon completely lacks both water and atmosphere. The surface temperature rises above 100°C (212°F) at lunar noon and sinks below −155°C (−247°F) at night. The gross surface features of the moon are visible to the unaided eye and were first studied telescopically in 1610 by Galileo.\n\nSurface Features\n\nThe lunar surface is divided into the mountainous highlands and the large, roughly circular plains called maria (sing. mare; from Lat.,=sea) by early astronomers, who erroneously believed them to be bodies of water. The smooth floors of the maria, varying from flat to gently undulating, are covered by a thin layer of powdered rock that darkens them and accounts for the moon's low albedo (only 7% of the incident sunlight is reflected back, the rest being absorbed). The brighter regions on the moon are the mountainous highlands, where the terrain is rough and strewn with rocky rubble. The lunar mountain ranges, with heights up to 25,000 ft (7800 m), are comparable to the highest mountains on earth but in general are not very steep. The highlands are densely scarred by thousands of craters—shallow circular depressions, usually ringed by well-defined walls and often possessing a central peak. Craters range in diameter from a few feet to many miles, and in some regions there are so many that they overlap or several smaller craters lie within a large crater. Craters are also found on the maria, although there are nowhere near as many as in the lunar highlands. Other prominent surface features include the rilles and rays. Rilles are sinuous, canyonlike clefts found near the edges of mountain ranges. Rays are bright streaks radiating outward from certain craters, such as Tycho.\n\nMare and highland rocks differ in both appearance and chemical content. For example, mare rocks are richer in iron and poorer in aluminum than highland rocks. The maria consist largely of basalt, i.e., igneous rock formed from magma. In the highlands the majority of the rocks are breccias—conglomerates formed from basaltic rock and often studded with small, green, glassy spheres. These spheres probably were formed as the spray of molten rock, originally melted by the heat of meteorite impact, recongealed in midflight. The exposure ages of some rocks (the time their surfaces have been exposed to the action of cosmic rays that produce radioactive isotopes) are as short as 50 million years, much shorter than their crystallization ages. These rocks may have been shifted in position by meteorite impact or seismic activity (moonquakes). However, present lunar seismic activity is very low, corroborating the image of the moon as an essentially static, nonevolving world.\n\nInternal Structure\n\nDiffraction of seismic waves provided the first clear-cut evidence for a lunar crust, mantle, and core analogous to those of the earth. The lunar crust is about 45 mi (70 km) thick, making the moon a rigid solid to a greater depth than the earth. The inner core has a radius of about 600 mi (1,000 km), about 2/3 of the radius of the moon itself. The internal temperature decreases from 830°C (1,530°F) at the center to 170°C (340°F) near the surface. The heat traveling outward near the lunar surface is about half that of the earth but still twice that predicted b