Good Wednesday morning.
If you’re a big skywatcher, you’re in for a treat tonight. At 5 a.m., EDT (09:00 GMT), the moon will arrive at its closest point to the Earth for the entire year – a perigee (closest approach) distance of 221,994 miles (357,264 kilometers) away, to be exact.
Later this evening, we’ll be treated to the brightest full moon of the year, a so-called “supermoon.” This is actually one of four 2022 supermoons, but tonight’s is the closest, and therefore will appear the brightest.
The term “supermoon“originated in astrology (the study of the movements and relative positions of celestial bodies interpreted as having an influence on human affairs and the natural world), not astronomy (the branch of science which deals with celestial objects, space, and the physical universe as a whole – in other words, the study of everything beyond the Earth’s atmosphere).
The word has only been around about four decades or so, but really became a thing in 2016 when there were several supermoons in a row and people started to take notice. That year – in November – the closest supermoon in almost seven decades occurred.
So what causes a supermoon? Two things, mainly. First, the moon needs to be at its closest perigee to the Earth in its 27-day orbit. Second, it needs to be at the “full” phase of its cycle, which happens every 29.5 days when it is fully illuminated by the sun.
This only happens a few times a year, because the moon’s orbit changes orientation while the Earth orbits around it.
If you are interested in maintaining the mystique of the supermoon, you might not want to click on any of the kinks above, because you’ll probably learn some rather disappointing facts – like, for instance, the supermoon isn’t really all that super, but only looks bigger than usual – especially while rising and/or setting due to a moon illusion.
Don’t let that stop you from enjoying the view, though. The weather looks like it’s going to cooperate, with intervals of clouds and sunshine – and it will be a bit cooler, with temperatures “just” in the low-to-mid 80s.
Oh, and if you are really a big skywatcher, I’m going to assume you’ve already savored the amazing images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which are really quite amazing, and include shots of a stellar nursery where stars are born, interactions between galaxies and a unique view of an exoplanet.
It doesn’t get much cooler than that.
Oh, and you wanna feel old? Today is actor Harrison Ford’s 80th birthday. Yeah, he was just 35 when he appeared as Han Solo in George Lucas’ “Star Wars.”
In the headlines…
When Air Force One touches down in Tel Aviv for his first visit to the region as president this afternoon, Joe Biden will be faced with a rapidly changing – and still unstable – part of the world.
Biden will spend two days in Jerusalem for talks with Israeli leaders before meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday in the occupied West Bank.
Afterward, he will take a direct flight from Israel to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia – a first for an American president – on Friday for talks with Saudi officials and to attend a summit of Gulf allies.
Biden on his first trip to the Middle East will embrace the Trump-era Abraham Accords that normalized relations between Israel and several Arab countries and pursue an expansion of growing Arab-Israeli security and economic ties.
After snubbing Biden by refusing to attend a summit meant to show American leadership, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico came to the White House to shore up a relationship the US needs to slow mass migration and bolster economic ties.
Biden nominated five new federal judges, but did not at this time move forward with a plan opposed by a growing number of Democrats and progressives to appoint a Republican abortion opponent to a judgeship in Kentucky.
The latest nominees include Cindy Chung, a prosecutor Biden previously picked to serve as the U.S. attorney for Pittsburgh and is now seeking to make the first Asian American ever on the Philadelphia-based the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Abortions became legal again in Louisiana after a Baton Rouge judge granted a temporary restraining order blocking the state’s abortion bans from being enforced.
Top immigration officials are planning to instruct detention centers around the country that women in custody are entitled to abortions and should be transferred to receive one if they are being detained in a state where abortion is now illegal.
The Supreme Court’s decision to let states ban abortion should not also give states the right to police women’s travel, a trio of U.S. Senate lawmakers – including New York’s Kirsten Gillibrand – said, rolling out a bill that would block such efforts.
Jill Biden apologized for saying Latinos are as “unique” as San Antonio breakfast tacos during a speech to the nation’s largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization.
The Senate narrowly confirmed Steven M. Dettelbach to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, giving the agency responsible for marshaling the federal response to gun violence its first permanent leader in seven years.
President Trump attempted to make the Jan. 6 march on the Capitol appear spontaneous even as he and his team intentionally assembled and galvanized a violence-prone mob to disrupt certification of his electoral defeat, a House committee showed.
Committee members said Trump rallied supporters to Washington that day as he was facing a narrowing set of options to hold on to the presidency, after legal challenges failed and other ideas were rejected by administration officials.
Biden’s coronavirus response team warned Americans that they must do more to protect themselves against Covid-19, as the highly transmissible Omicron subvariant BA.5 fuels a new wave of infections, re-infections and hospitalizations across the country.
With the blazingly contagious BA.5 coronavirus variant blitzing communities across the nation, the White House pleaded with middle-aged and elderly Americans to get a fresh vaccine if they have not.
With known coronavirus cases rising significantly across the globe, continued Omicron evolution and increased pressure on public health systems, the World Health Organization said that the pandemic remains a public health emergency.
The WHO urged governments and health care systems to take steps to curb Covid-19 transmission as a fresh wave of infections moves across Europe and the US.
The coronavirus pandemic caused a surge in superbug infections and deaths in U.S. hospitals, reversing years of progress fighting one of the gravest public health challenges in modern medicine, according to a new analysis by the CDC.
The special report found that more than 29,400 people died from antimicrobial-resistant infections in 2020. The full number is likely much higher, given that data for half of the 18 pathogens identified as threats are unavailable or delayed.
As New York City enters its sixth wave of COVID-19, few seem inclined to get themselves into high alert mode again.
The New York state Department of Health is continuing the long battle of combatting COVID-19, as well as the relatively new challenge of the monkeypox virus, Gov. Kathy Hochul said.
New Yorkers who contract COVID-19 can now call a free 24-hour hotline to find treatment options. It’s geared towards underserved communities and residents who don’t have a regular doctor.
Dozens of New York City pools and recreation centers will distribute at-home COVID diagnostics under an expansion of the city’s testing program.
New York has launched a new public awareness campaign on treatment options for people who test positive for COVID.
Hochul refuses to take a stand on the issue of “qualified immunity” for cops — prompting challenger Lee Zeldin to accuse her of lacking a “moral compass” amid surging crime that has New Yorkers on edge.
Hochul announced $10 million has been awarded in the first round of the Abortion Provider Support Fund to 13 programs, covering 63 sites.
Hochul, citing a surge in patients coming to New York from other states, announced an additional $25 million in funding for abortion clinics to expand staffing here.
The first shots since the primaries were fired in the race governor, with Hochul and her Republican challenger Zeldin indirectly facing off in separate press conferences.
A growing chorus of critics is calling on Hochul to relinquish control of the massive Penn Station redevelopment project and allow a new entity to be in charge.
The first of what is expected to be multiple legal challenges to the recently approved gun law changes for concealed carry was filed by GOP House candidate Carl Paladino this week in federal court as both sides brace for legal battles over the measures.
Chief Judge Janet DiFiore’s abrupt resignation ends the Commission on Judicial Conduct investigation into a complaint that she improperly attempted to influence a disciplinary hearing of one of her top critics.
The state Commission on Judicial Conduct had agreed to probe the complaint lodged by NYSCOA ‘s Dennis Quirk, who accused DiFiore of using the “enormous weight and prestige” of her position to stifle his free speech and get him fired for his email to her.
The new Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government is taking shape with at least one familiar face. Republican state Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt named attorney Gary Lavine, an ex-JCOPE member, as his appointee on the panel.
In the first sign of fallout in New York from the stock market decline, collections from a key component of the income tax fell by one-third in June from June 2021, raising doubts about the revenue estimates anchoring the city and state budgets.
Mayor Eric Adams suggested that the girlfriend of the man killed while attacking Manhattan bodega worker Jose Alba should be charged for stabbing the clerk during the fracas.
Backers of the Harlem bodega worker facing murder charges for a wild on-the-job stabbing expressed optimism that he will be cleared after the advocates sat down with the Manhattan district attorney.
Bragg told city bodega owners that there is “absolutely” a chance he may drop the murder charge against worker Jose Alba, although he left himself plenty of wiggle room to still continue with the controversial case, the group says.
Adams defended New York City’s emergency management agency for putting out a public service announcement about surviving a nuclear attack.
Adams said the nuclear attack preparedness spot was a “great idea” born out of the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine, adding: “I’m a big believer in better safe than sorry…We’re going to always be proactive, not panic, but we’re going to be prepared.”
Adams doubled down on calling protesters against school budget cuts “clowns” — saying those who confronted him at a town hall deserve the label because they turned the event into a “circus.”
Adams held second a community conversation this week on public safety – this time in Harlem – in the wake of violence that rocked the community.
City Hall is suing to try and shut down an allegedly illegal hotel that used Airbnb to advertise its rooms in a Manhattan apartment building, after repeated attempts at doing so out of court, city officials announced.
The building near the East River in Manhattan was the site of one of the biggest illegal Aribnb rental operations in the city in the past year, the lawsuit said.
The MTA’s congestion pricing plan is one of the largest transportation initiatives in the history of the country, but New York State and federal government officials have shrouded its approval process in secrecy.
An MTA board member, David S. Mack, went on a tirade against CEO Janno Lieber last month that ended with him giving the chairman the finger — all over the loss of his authority-issued parking permit, sources said.
The state attorney general’s office has launched dual probes into the deaths of men who were shot by NYPD officers over the weekend, one in Brooklyn and the other in Queens, officials announced.
A new left-right coalition is galloping to accomplish something the previous City Council and mayor failed to do: ban horse carriages.
A man who died in a Rikers Island jail on Sunday appeared to have been lying dead in his cell for hours before correction staff members discovered his body, according to two people familiar with the incident.
Two people, including a 7-year-old boy, died yesterday after a 27-foot boat capsized in the Hudson River just north of Pier 79 in Midtown Manhattan, according to police officials.
Ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio has raised more than half-a-million dollars for his congressional run in the past three months, about equal to Rep. Mondaire Jones’ self-reported haul in the same race, but less than former Trump impeachment lawyer Dan Goldman’s.
Mental health counselors will be able to diagnose their clients as of yesterday, in an effort to speed up the waiting time before people in distress can get help.
Three people have been arrested on over 100 charges for allegedly leaving hateful and racist symbols in churches and other public and private properties in Hornell, Steuben County, according to police.
Hornell’s mayor, John Buckley, described the blanketing of the city with racist, antisemitic literature as “shocking” and an aberration in what he and Chief Murray, a 40-year veteran of the Hornell police force, both called a “close-knit community.”
A teenage boy’s submission for Ulster County’s “I voted” sticker design contest has gone viral. “This is how we all feel about politics right now,” a Twitter user wrote.
Nineteen people took advantage of Saratoga County’s first day of its monkeypox vaccination clinic yesterday – the only vaccination clinic local health officials are running in upstate New York.
More Saratoga Spring restaurants this summer are doing what was once largely unthinkable: closing one or two days a week instead of trying to wring out every last bit of available summer revenue by being open every day.
A lobster was saved from the boiling pot last week after a staff member at Price Chopper/Market 32 immediately noticed the orange tint of the lobster’s shell.
Twitter sued Elon Musk to force the billionaire to complete his $44 billion acquisition of the company, setting the stage for a prolonged legal battle over the fate of the social media service.
Actor Bradley Cooper and former Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin are reportedly dating.
In June, Abedin, 45, put her East Hampton pad up for rent at $35,000 per month — only a couple of months after she started dating Cooper.
