The Moon is getting bigger and it’s orbiting closer to Earth. Run for your lives!

No, don’t do that actually. What’s about to happen on March 19 is not terribly out of the ordinary.

The March full moon will be the closest (to the Earth) and largest full moon of 2011. Why? It comes down to the fact that the Moon’s orbit around the Earth is not a perfect circle, it’s an ellipse in fact.

One side of the Moon’s orbit is actually roughly 31,000 miles closer to Earth than the other side of its orbit.

When the Moon’s orbit takes it the farthest away from Earth, the Moon is at its apogee. When it makes its closest approach, the Moon is at its perigee.

So not only will we have a full Moon on March 19 but the Moon will also be at its perigee. This means that the Moon will appear big in the night sky and it will be very bright; a sight to see for sure . . .