The shape of Moon’s orbit around the Earth is not perfectly circular, but is a slight ellipse, with the Earth slightly off-centre within this ellipse. This means sometimes the Moon is a little closer to the earth and sometimes it’s a little further away.

If its closest point - its perigee - co-incides with a full moon, it’s a so called ‘supermoon’ and you can guarantee headlines about it, especially if it’s a slow news day.

With the circumference of the sky divided into 360 degrees, the apparent size of the moon is about half of one of these degrees. The difference in apparent size of the Moon at perigee compared to apogee (its furthest point away) is 0.07 of a degree. So it’s not really possible for us to perceive the very slight increase in size of a ‘Supermoon’ compared to a regular ‘full moon’, despite the excitement with which the phenomenon is described in the news.

There’s another factor that has a much greater effect on the apparent size of the Moon, which is the ‘Moon Illusion’, and I’ve previously written about this.

So when the full moon looks particularly large - always just above the horizon and always opposite the Sun that has just set - you’re not seeing a ‘supermoon’, but the complex way our brains perceive the Moon and the space around us.

This is a short note about the news today that a record 4,500,000 children are living in poverty in the UK.

Just a reminder it is 2025 not 1825. We have a Labour government that seems more prepared to protect the wealth of the richest in the society (by choosing not to tax them more), than improve the lives millions of children in poverty.

As I’m writing this the Institute for Fiscal Studies is saying there’s a chance the Chancellor will have to raise taxes in the autumn.

This will be taxes on the wealthiest, who will still be wealthy when they’ve paid that extra 2% of tax on top of the £10 million of assets they hold, right Chancellor?