The City of Pittsburgh and the Perigee Moon

On Friday I learned that on Saturday night we would be able to see the Perigee moon, or "super moon" in Pittsburgh. This one night---and not again for 18 years---the moon would be closer to the earth, and would thus appear 14% bigger and 30% brighter. I also read that the sunset would be at 7:31 PM and the moon would rise at 7:52 PM, in the Eastern sky. I pictured driving up to a nearby lookout spot, called Schenley Oval, where we could see a wide view of the city, but then I realized that Schenley park faces due West, and that the moon would rise in the East. I remembered that we might have a great view of the moon from Mount Washington, and so I planned for us to drive up there as a family to see the moon.

We got the kids dressed in their jammies and threw some shoes and their coats in the car. We drove up to Mount Washington in record time. We saw clusters of couples holding hands, and about a half-dozen professional photographers with cameras as big as telescopes pointed towards the Eastern horizon. At 7:52 we started looking for the moon, even a bit frantically. No moon. I took about 12 shots of the horizon, because Pittsburgh was laid out below us in a blue-black shimmery wonder, tinged with pink-orange-lavender in the West.

Jacob was not having a good time. "Mom, I'm cold. I wanna go home." He started fidgeting and squirming. I thought to myself, "great, this is probably just what I was like at his age." I remember complaining about being wet and cold the whole time we went into the snowy woods to cut our own Christmas tree, for example. But then I saw something that looked like a red-pink-orange hat on the edge of the horizon.

"Jacob, it's the moon!"

It really did look great. We ran down to a view finder at a lookout area but we realized we'd left our money in the car. By some great stroke of luck my English department business manager, Margaret, was there with her husband. They said it was their "date night." Margaret gave Jacob a quarter. Through the view finder the moon looked resplendent, like a giant peach with craters, lit as if from within.

I took a lot of pictures, but none of them came close to capturing the wonder of that moment. The moon really did look bigger, and it was such a glorious almost edible color, reflecting the pastel colored winter sunset. And Pittsburgh was so decidedly shimmery, with the sunset and the moon bouncing off the water and the bridges all below us.

When the moon had crept significantly up from the horizon we piled back in the car and headed home. I tried to take some more photos but I couldn't really get any good shots. We bundled the kids quickly into bed. Josh went to a birthday party for a friend of his and I watched the Pitt Panthers lose a heartbreaking NCAA tournament basketball game to the Butler Bulldogs. I fell asleep about 11:00 PM.

This morning when I was looking through the pictures I took last night I saw that I captured the moon rising over the horizon without realizing that the moon was in the picture (the first picture in the series, below). It made me realize that however prepared we are to see wonder, we can miss it even when it is right in front of our eyes! I hope some of you got to see the Perigee moon from your vantage point last night!