Stellar show over Mumbai skies: Biggest supermoon after 68 yrs

MUMBAI: The action station in Mumbai on Monday evening for an important celestial event--the

biggest supermoon

since 1948--was the Nehru Centre at Worli.

Arvind Paranjpye

, director of

Nehru Planetarium

, set up his camera on the terrace of the 15th floor of the centre's Discovery of India building to capture the event. Initially, there was a sense of uncertainty . “It is foggy and there is a lot of smog and I doubt if we can see the supermoon,“ Paranjpye told TOI. He scanned the eastern skies over Mumbai hoping to catch a glimpse of the rising supermoon, but there was no sign of it.

The media gathered below the circular building, which has become an important landmark of Mumbai.Three telescopes had been installed, one of the planetarium and two of amateur astronomers.

Red in colour, the supermoon emerged from the skyscrapers of Lower Parel causing some excitement, and the attention of a few members of the public close to the centre who stared at the moon with awe. “I can spot some of the craters,“ said a boy as the supermoon began presiding over the financial capital of India.

In the beginning, the moon appeared 14% larger. For India, the event had a particular significance because it was on November 14, 2008, that Chandrayaan-1's moon impact probe with the Indian tricolour impacted at Jawahar Sithal near the moon's Shakleton Crater.Chandrayaan-1 was India's first lunar mission, which discovered water in the moon also on November 14, 2008. The amateur astronomers on Monday at the Nehru Centre felt rewarded and said that they were happy that their initial apprehensions and fears that there would be no supermoon because of the smog was allayed.

They clicked pictures and observed the supermoon with their telescopes.Nehru Science Centre director Shivprasad Khened said that in the last few days he received a lot of messages about the supermoon. “The peo ple of Mumbai have shown a lot of interest,“ he said.

Amateur astronomer Aadil Desai said, “The public will not be able to notice any significant difference between the supermoon and the moon on a normal day .The nomenclature supermoon is a recent phenomena.“

His statement proved true because evening stollers on Lala Lajpatrai Marg opposite the racecourse were unaware that there was a supermoon above them.