... and even that would technically also include, half the time, a new moon... pronunciation isn't too bad, I always used to do it as Si-ziggy but it's Siz-a-gee, which is very sci-fi-ey, IMHO




No problem, syzygy aren't irrelevant notes of astrology and supermoon really only gets objected to by us, I think, because of who coined it not the word. It actually fits in pretty well to the normal physics naming protocols, but then, so would a box of lucky charms. Anyway thye are scientifically significant, the opposite of the Supermoon, when the moon is at perigee but between the earth and sun, creates the Proxigean Spring Tide, a supermoon causes neap tides. Those of course have pretty significant effects, the brightness increase though would not, the moon seems pretty bright, and of course is, but visual light sensitivity is pretty logarithmic, a full moon is only 1% of 1% the sun's brightness and so a 15% or so increase on that really won't register on a person or animal's vision, the whole horizon effect making the moon seem larger though combined with media hype... well, you know how that goes.

There's an annular eclipse coming up on May 20th, for cooler moon stuff, it shouldn't be visible where I'm at but I think everything west of the Mississippi will get some viewing. As a happy little factoid, it will be an annular eclipse, rather than full, specifically because the moon is now at perigee, and thus in half a month will be at apogee, furthest from earth, and not able to fully block the sun. But that will be a syzygy as well, in this case an apogee-syzygy, I suppose.