The celestial phenomenon occurs, which occurs once in 20 years brought cheers on many faces, who were initially apprehensive of witnessing the rare event.
"We were reading about it for the past few days. On the actual day, at one point of time, I thought that the moon had ditched us. But, thankfully, it appeared and I was able to see the supermoon," said Arpita Singh, a student.
Equally elated was Shankar Shukla. "Things were good yesterday. And on Saturday it was certainly better, " he said.
Incharge of Indira Gandhi Planetarium, Anil Yadav said that supermoon tends to cause weather changes. He was of the view that Saturday's clouding could be linked to it.
Stating that the commonly used term, 'supermoon' is actually a non-scientific term, Yadav said, "It is used to refer to a situation, when the moon is closest to the earth in it's orbit. The natural reduction of gap results in the moon looking brighter, bigger and striking."
Explaining the causes behind the shortening of gap, he said that the moon moves around the earth in an elliptical or egg-shaped path. Moon's oval journey brings it closer to earth sometimes and pushes it away on other occasions.
The average closest point or perigee is about 3.54 lakh kilometres away from the earth. The distance between earth and moon is 4.10 lakh kilometres on farthest point or apogee. Besides these two, there is an absolute closest point as well which causes the supermoon sort of situation.
Various schools of astrology believe that supermoon may bring in a stroke of bad luck. Some of them blame the tsunami and earthquake in Japan as a result of the same. But scientists fraternity refutes. "Lunar effects are just a tiny force, when compared to the energy needed to spin the earth. Moon can have no impact at all," said Yadav. "Disasters like tsunami and earthquake are caused by earth's internal movement. While earthquake results from intrusion of layers, tsunami occurs when the sea floor moves," he added.
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