Beware: There is a Full Moon Tonight

If you believe a full moon brings out the crazy, be on the lookout, since the full moon appears in the sky tonight!

Here are some facts about a full moon you may not know:

1) There's actually four kinds of lunar months
Our months correspond approximately to the length of time it takes our natural satellite to go through a full cycle.

2) We see slightly more than half of the moon from Earth
Most reference books will note that because the moon rotates only once during each revolution about the Earth, we never see more than half of its total surface. The truth, however, is that we actually get to see more of it over the course of its elliptical orbit: 59 percent (almost three-fifths).

3) It would take hundreds of thousands of moons to equal the brightness of the sun
The full moon shines with a magnitude of -12.7, but the sun is 14 magnitudes brighter, at -26.7.  The ratio of brightness of the sun versus the moon amounts to a difference of 398,110 to 1.  So that's how many full moons you would need to equal the brightness of the sun.  But this all a moot point, because there is no way that you could fit that many full moons in the sky.

4) The first- or last-quarter moon is not one half as bright as a full moon
If the moon's surface were like a perfectly smooth billiard ball, its surface brightness would be the same all over. But the moon has a very rough topography.  Also, the moon's face is splotched with dark regions. The end result is that at first quarter, the moon appears only one eleventh as bright as when it's full.

5) A 95-percent illuminated moon appears half as bright as a full moon
Believe it or not, the moon is half as bright as a full moon about 2.4 days before and after a full moon.