May's Flower Moon, To Scale
Tonight we get a chance to view May’s Full Moon, dubbed the “Flower Moon”. It’s technically at it’s fullest just before dawn on Thursday.
With the weather being less than ideal tonight, it’s hard to focus on any specific feature, but have you ever wondered how big the Moon is relative to Earth? When we gaze out from our planet at night, we have no familiar reference to scale our observations with, so it’s easy to lose perspective.
The Moon is an average distance of 238,855 mi from the Earth, depending on which side of its slightly eccentric orbit relative to Earth we measure from. Even at speeds over 2,000 mi/hr, it took Apollo astronauts over three days to reach the Moon.
Earth’s Moon is one of the larger moons (known as natural satellites) in our Solar System, were it not for the fact that it orbits our planet it might qualify as a planet on its own. Venus and Mars for example are both smaller than the Earth, and though Mars does have its own moons they’re much smaller relatively.
For context, the Earth is 12,756 miles in diameter, and the United States is about 2,800 mi across. The Moon is 2,159 miles in diameter, meaning the Moon would fit inside an image of the United States projected to scale on its surface.
Next time you see the Moon outside, use this image to imagine its scale relative to our planet. The outer shell is drawn to scale around the Moon for comparison.
May’s Flower Moon, drawn to scale with the Earth’s Radius
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