So I measured the distance to the moon again using a modified version of the project I outlined here. In that other video I said that I would try and find the distance to the moon again and I did, it was even much more successful than I could have imagined.
Obviously I went a bit more technical than I did in the original experiment but even so, if you have access to a video camera, tripod and a decent video editing software (FCP or Premiere) there’s no reason you couldn’t try the same. Conceptually it’s practically the same idea as my other video posted before the eclipse. The only true change was including the relative projection of the earth’s true radius instead of just the umbra.
In anycase what really popped out to me was that I hit on the maximum speed for the moon. As I said in the video the moon is moving the fastest when it is at it’s nearest. There was a ton of hype about the “Supermoon” and how the combination of a lunar eclipse during a supermoon was not going to happen for something like 60 plus years. I mostly ignored the hype but the fact that my numbers agreed so well with the maximum speed of the moon unexpectedly verified that it was in fact a supermoon.
Linkography
https://youcanscienceit.com/2015/09/25/how-far-away-is-the-moon-using-a-lunar-eclipse/
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/moonfact.html
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%281.08*27.3*24*60*60%29%2F%282pi%29
