Tonight's Full Moon Will Be an Oddly Shrunken 'Micromoon'

Tonight is the full "Worm Moon," but it might not be that impressive. Heck, you probably shouldn't even bother glancing up. Due to an alignment of phase and distance, the lunar orb could look weirdly shrunken, like a gray, moldy apple forgotten on the counter.

That's because the moon is baring it all at its farthest point from earth—about 31,000 miles more distant than 2015's other full moons. The rocky satellite's orbit is elliptical; when it's at perigee closest to the planet, it can look bigger, and when it wanders to its most-distant apogee it can seem smaller. When it reaches its full phase at apogee some folks call it a "micromoon." That pop-culture term distinguishes it from its opposite partner, the "supermoon," an astrological bugbear supposedly responsible for earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions. (That's rubbish, of course.)