People from all walks of life gathered in large numbers atop the Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC) building in Nairobi to marvel at the biggest and brightest moon of the year, known in space lingo as the full super moon.
This is a phenomenon that occurs when the full moon is at perigee - the closest distance it is to Earth during the year at 363,300km.
This is because the orbit of the moon is not a perfect circle, and sometimes it’s closer to Earth (Perigee) and sometimes it is farther from Earth (Apogee).
”When the two miracles happen and the full moon coincides with the perigee, that’s when a
supermoon occurs. A super moon is usually 16 per cent brighter and seven per cent bigger than a full moon,” Samwel Nyangi of the Amateur Astronomical Society of Kenya (AASK).
In the event organised by AASK and Leo Sky Africa, various entities like the Kenya Space Agency and the University of Nairobi provided telescopes that made the Thursday night observation worthwhile.
A notable mention is Kenya Space Agency’s computerized Celestron Nextar 8SE telescope that showed the moon in unprecedented detail.
A KSA representative pointed out the Apollo moon landing site, moon craters as well as points on the moon where signs of water were discovered, all visible through the telescope.
Awestruck astronomy enthusiasts were able to capture the moon through the telescope using their smartphones with the help of an adapter that was attached to the telescope.
Amateur astrophotographers used this to their advantage to take images of the moon using their cameras. The phenomenon happens about three to four times a year.
“The goal was to gather people from different sectors of the space industry, academia and government, so we can start building a community of people who are interested. For us, it was a community-building exercise under a common phenomenon, the super moon. We wanted to bring such events locally so as to break the norm that it is a foreign concept,” said Kimani Nyoike of Leo Sky Africa.
