...and that will give is a full picture of the surface and of Mercury's electromagnetic environment in due course. It's a bit much that Mercury is more habitable right now (at the poles) than Venus is with its huge global warming gone mad conditions!

NASA TV now talking about Messenger going into orbit around Mercury.

The burn has started.

Messenger in orbit around Mercury.

I was lucky enough to see a shuttle launch some years back and it is quite an exhilarating event!

That depends on the part of Florida you are in.

The first post in this thread was about MESSENGER.

Firstly, tonight we'll hopefully have a clear sky because the Moon will be at it's closest distance to Earth since 1992 and there's more here http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/20...st-point-years. Nothing to worry about though.

As for the Mega Galaxy, here's a link to a New Scientist article on the biggest things in the universe: http://www.newscientist.com/article/...e-universe.htm.

In particular, that IC 1101 galaxy is just awesome http://astronomycentral.co.uk/astron...e-known-limits. It is 5 million light years across which is 50x the diameter of our own Milky Way galaxy and it's twice as long as the distance between our Milky Way Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy.

Finally, here's a link to an interesting discussion between Professor Brian Cox and Dr Brian Green which is hosted by Andrew Marr - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zdbhz.

Nice to see the Guardian isn't overplaying this 'supermoon' in the way that many other sources are.

I've seen many sources lately stating that the Moon will be 30,000 miles closer than usual, and linking it with the Japanese earthquake

What these sensationalist sources always neglect to mention is that the Moon comes to perigee (close-point) every single month, and that this current perigee - though 30,000 miles closer than the Moon's average distance - is only a thousand or so miles closer than most other perigees.
They also neglect to mention that on the day of the big one in Japan, the Moon was nearer apogee (furthest point) than it was to perigee.

Indeed, Carlos_dfc, that stuff is a tad depressing though.

On a separate topic, the Moon really does look larger when it's near the horizon and there are objects to compare it with even though it's ultimately an optical illusion.

Well you can never let truth get in the way of a good story can you?

a rubbish pic of the 'super' moon here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10823446@N04/5540986698/

Was a bit of an anti climax tbh...

My pictures from today

mine was never that big

I was using an slr with tele-lens though!

Very good effort.

really i didn't think they were of best quality

Yes but none of us can control the weather!

the skies were clear and perfect till about 3pm

the cloud wasn't forcast and unfortunately it was just one of those things

fortunately i saw it in some form though

We were lucky with mostly clear skies overhead on the south coast so had a terrific view of the Moon with some 12 X 50 binos. I was hoping to see M32 too as 8pm-ish is currently a good time, but too much cloud that way.

Here are a couple I managed to get earlier before the cloud rolled in.
http://flic.kr/p/9rDMQD

I was a bit disappointed, to be honest. From some of the articles I caught glimpes of, I half expected to open my front door tonight and find the moon right outside going boo! However, the moon is as beautiful as ever, even if it doesn't really seem any closer

I think it`s great !!

Too cloud here grrrr and the night before was so clear

I discivered this little tool last night. I have not come across anything quite like it before. See http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/s....php?t=1451015

That's quite neat )