Image: BuffettNews.com

Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Report Highlights Pros and Cons of Investing in a Giant

 

There were a few surprises in Warren Buffett’s annual letter to shareholders released Saturday, the least of these will probably garner a good deal of attention at the Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Meeting. As announced by Mr. Buffett in the letter, “’Cousin” Jimmy Buffett has designed a pontoon “party” boat that is now being manufactured by Forest River, a Berkshire subsidiary. The boat will be introduced on April 29 at our Berkshire Bazaar of Bargains. And, for two days only, shareholders will be able to purchase Jimmy’s masterpiece at a 10% discount. Your bargain-hunting chairman will be buying a boat for his family’s use. Join me.” Other, more critical but less fun surprises are covered below.

 

Impact of interest Rates on Berkshire

Berkshire’s balance sheet includes $144 billion of cash and cash equivalents. Of this sum, $120 billion is held in U.S. Treasury bills. US T-bills are structured to mature in one year or less. At least two things are worth noting from this. First, T-bills as of February 25^th are yielding from .03% in a one-month maturity, to 1.13% out a full year. Most expect the Fed to tighten during 2022, with some forecasters expecting as many as eight 25bp to 50bp (0.25% to 0.50%) increases each. If the Fed does tighten by only 25bp eight times it will likely serve to raise the T-bill curve levels up 2% or more. A 2% increase on the “risk free” rate would add $2.4 billion to Berkshires bottom line.  In 2021 Berkshire Hathaway reported revenue of $90 billion. The interest rate hike would be meaningful to the companies earnings. The other interesting fact worth paying attention to is that the amount Berkshire Hathaway owns in U.S. Treasuries is equal to 0.50% of the publicly held national debt of the U.S. If Berkshire should go on a buying spree and not roll their maturing T-bills, this by itself could cause upward pressure on U.S. interest rates. 

The CEO’s letter to shareholders made clear that, although they have committed to holding $30 billion in cash, they would prefer not to have as much excess cash available as they do. There is also a concern when looking to invest in public entities that interest rates that are low push the prices of all productive investments upward, whether these are stocks, real estate, farms, oil wells, etc.. Buffett writes, “Other factors influence valuations as well, but interest rates will always be important.”

 

Why Not Repurchase Shares?

Buffett explains there are three ways to increase investor value. First and most important is to increase the long-term earning power of Berkshire’s controlled businesses through internal growth or by making acquisitions. Currently, internal opportunities deliver better returns than acquisitions. Berkshire’s resources are far greater than available opportunities. The second method is buying stock in good companies.  While there are times when there are many attractive opportunities, Buffett writes, “Today, though, we find little that excites us.”

So, if Berkshire Hathaway is such a good investment, why not repurchase shares and allow the company to multiply its benefit to itself? In answering this question, Buffett says about share repurchase, “Through that simple act, we increase your share of the many controlled and non-controlled businesses Berkshire owns. When the price/value equation is right, this path is the easiest and most certain way for us to increase your wealth.” During the past two years, Berkshire did repurchase 9% of their outstanding shares.  Buffett says, “I want to underscore that for Berkshire repurchases to make sense, our shares must offer appropriate value. We don’t want to overpay for the shares of other companies, and it would be value-destroying if we were to overpay when we are buying Berkshire.”

Take-Away

The success of Berkshire Hathaway and the “Oracle of Omaha” that remains at the helm are worth watching if you’re an investor at any level. In addition to the decades of success, there is another story of big versus small or even young versus old. It’s the story of a company too large to efficiently benefit from its success. While their decision-making capacity may be second to none, much of their massive “firepower” remains underutilized. This makes Berkshire Hathaway worth considering as a core long-term holding in much the same way one invests in a large balanced mutual fund focused on stable growth. Investors that seek companies with maximum efficiency and capital deployment with far more growth potential should consider allocating at least a portion of their investments to smaller well researched companies. The data and research within Channelchek focus exclusively on small and microcap companies that aren’t burdened by billions in underperforming assets. Sign-up for daily emails and access to top-tier research.

 

Paul Hoffman

Managing Editor, Channelchek

 

 

Suggested Reading

It’s Officially Warren Buffett Season – Hints on What to Expect

Long Term Retirement Money and Fledgling Companies

Is GDP Growth Transitory and Inflation Persistent?

Why Goldman Says to Buy the Dip

 

Sources

https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-guide/#_blank

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/26/read-warren-buffetts-annual-letter-to-berkshire-hathaway-shareholders.html

https://www.forestriverinc.com/Our-Products/Pontoon-Boats

https://omaha.com/business/warren-watch-buffett-cousins-warren-and-jimmy-share-an-on-air-moment/article_40fec2ad-c1c3-5d12-9c1b-8b6319e73670.html

 

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How Anna Sorokin “Inventing Anna” and Others Easily Con Smart Strangers

 

Maybe she had so much money she just lost track of it. Maybe it was all a misunderstanding.

That’s how Anna Sorokin’s marks explained away the supposed German heiress’s strange requests to sleep on their couch for the night, or to put plane tickets on their credit cards, which she would then forget to pay back.

The subject of a new Netflix series, “Inventing Anna,” Sorokin, who told people her name was Anna Delvey, conned over $250,000 out of wealthy acquaintances and high-end Manhattan businesses between 2013 and 2017. It turns out her lineage was a mirage. Instead, she was an intern at a fashion magazine who came from a working-class family of Russian immigrants.

Yet the people around her were quick to accept her odd explanations, even creating excuses for her that strained credulity. The details of the Sorokin case mirror those from another recent Netflix production, “The Tinder Swindler,” which tells the story of an Israeli conman named Simon Leviev. Leviev persuaded women he met on the dating app to lend him large sums of money with similarly unbelievable claims: He was a billionaire whose enemies were trying to track him down and, for security reasons, couldn’t use his own credit cards.

 

This article was republished with permission from   The Conversation, a news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It represents the research-based findings and thoughts of Vanessa Bohns, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior, Cornell University.

 

How is it that so many people could have been gullible enough to buy the fantastical stories spun by Sorokin and Leviev? And why, even when “[t]he red flags were everywhere” – as one of Sorokin’s marks put it – did people continue to believe these grifters, spend their time with them and agree to lend them money?

As a social psychologist who has written a book about our surprising power of persuasion, I don’t see this as an unusual glitch of human nature. Rather, I view the stories about Sorokin and Leviev as examples of bad actors exploiting the social processes people rely on every day for efficient and effective human communication and cooperation.

 

Image: Anna Sorokin in Manhattan courtroom

 

To Trust is to be Human

Despite the belief that people are skeptics by nature, primed to shout “gotcha!” at any mistake or faux pas, this simply isn’t the case. Research shows that people tend to default to trusting others over distrusting them, believing them over doubting them and going along with someone’s self-presentation rather than embarrassing them by calling them out.

Elle Dee, a DJ whom Delvey once asked to pick up a 35,000-euro bar tab, described the ease with which people went along with Delvey’s claims: “I don’t think she even had to try that hard. Despite her utterly unsound story, people were all-too-eager to buy it.”

It still might be hard to believe that people in Sorokin’s circle would willingly hand over their money to someone they hardly knew.

Yet psychologists have watched participants hand over their money to complete strangers for many years across hundreds of experiments. In these studies, participants are told they are taking part in various types of “investment games” in which they are given the opportunity to hand over their money to another participant in the hopes of receiving a return on their investment.

What’s fascinating about these studies is that most participants are cynical about ever seeing their money again – let alone any returns on their investment – and yet they still hand it over. In other words, despite deep reservations, they still choose to trust a complete stranger.

There’s something deeply human about this impulse. Humans are social creatures, and trusting one another is baked into our DNA. As psychologist David Dunning and his colleagues have pointed out, without trust it is hard to imagine endeavors like Airbnb, car shares or a working democracy having any success.

 

Lies Are the Exception, Not the Norm

Of course, Sorokin’s requests were often accompanied by elaborate explanations and justifications, and you might wonder why so few people seemed to doubt the veracity of her claims. Yet just as trust is a default of human interaction, a presumption of sincerity is a default expectation of basic communication.

This maxim of communication was first proposed by Paul Grice, an influential philosopher of language. Grice argued that communication is a cooperative endeavor. Understanding one another requires working together. And to do that, there must be some ground rules, one of which is that both parties are telling the truth.

In an era of “truthiness” and “fake news,” such a premise may seem absurd and na?ve. But people lie far less than you might think; in fact, if the default assumption were that the person you were talking to was lying, communication would be nearly impossible. If I challenged you on whether you read every book you claimed to have read, or whether the steak you had last night was really overcooked, we’d never get anywhere.

Researchers have found experimental evidence for what is sometimes called the “truth default.” In one series of studies, researchers asked participants to evaluate whether statements were true or false. Sometimes the participants were interrupted so they couldn’t fully process the statements. This allowed the researchers to get at people’s default assumption: When in doubt, would they default to belief or disbelief?

It turns out that when participants weren’t able to fully process statements, they tended to simply assume they were true.

 

A Reluctance to Accuse

Even if Sorokin’s marks were to doubt her story, it’s unlikely that they would have called her out on it.

The sociologist Erving Goffman’s classic theory of “facework” argues that it is as uncomfortable for us to call someone else out – to suggest they aren’t who they are presenting themselves to be – as it is to be the person called out. Even when people see someone doing something they disagree with, they’re loath to say anything.

Other studies have explored this phenomenon. One found that people hesitate to call others out for using racist language they disagree with or for sexual harassment.

As much as you’d like to believe that if you were in the shoes of Sorokin’s and Leviev’s targets you would have been emboldened to blow the lid off the whole charade, chances are that rather than make things uncomfortable for everyone, you’d simply go along with it.

The tendency to trust, believe and go along with other people’s explanations of events may seem disadvantageous. And it’s true, these inclinations can expose people. But without trust, there is no cooperation; without assuming others are telling the truth, there is no communication; and without accepting people for what they present to the world, there is no foundation on which to build a relationship.

In other words, the very features that look like glitches when exploited are in fact the very essence of what it means to be human.

 

Suggested Reading

Equity Markets Give a Lesson in Behavioral Psychology

Should Investors Listen to Influencers?

The Micro and Macro of Economics and Human Behavior

Why Zoom Meetings Can Leave You Fatigued

 

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  Image Credit: Fabricio Trujillo (Pexels)

The Super Bowl Indicator, If You’re Long You May Want to Root For the Rams

 

If you’re choosing between watching
the Olympics or the Super Bowl, this may help. Sunday night around 6pm ET, the
women’s 300M speedskating relay will be competing head-to-head against Bengals
versus Rams. While the Winter Olympics only comes around once every four years
and includes countries from around the world, for investors the annual big football game between the top two cities is considered to be a remarkable harbinger for
market moves.

So if you’re concerned about what the market may do Monday morning and throughout the rest of the year, you may not want to pass up on what’s going on in Los Angeles. Many say the big game has statistical significance to the market returns for the year, and if you’re long stocks, you should be cheering for the Rams, here’s why. The Super Bowl Indicator is considered one of the most consistent market predictors of the stock market. And as most investors today will tell you, the stock market could stand to gain a few yards this year.  After all, even the Dow has returned a negative 2.91% since the beginning of the year.

Football to the Rescue?

In the late 1970s, sportswriter Leonard Koppett discovered a connection between who won the National Football League’s (NFL) championship game and how the stock market did over the following 11 months. Since then, market strategist Robert H. Stovall kept tracking it. Stovall passed away in 2020, but the tradition is alive and well.

At its most basic level, the Super Bowl Indicator predicts that if the winning team is from the National Football Conference (NFC) or was part of the NFL prior to the 1970 merger with the AFL, then stocks will be bullish for the year. If victory instead goes to the team that comes from the AFC, then the market will be bearish over the remainder of the year.

From 1967-2015, the indicator was accurate 40 times out of 49 years. That’s an accuracy rate of 82%. Hard to beat that however, over the past six years, the indicator has given some false readings. As of the 2021 Super Bowl, the indicator lost some of its magic and has been right 41 out of 55 games, that’s a 75% win rate.

During the years 2016 and 2017, when two AFC teams won, the Denver Broncos and the New England Patriots, the market defied the indicator and rose. Then in 2018, when the Philadelphia Eagles won, an NFC team, the market fell.

During the 2019 and 2020 Super Bowls, two more AFC teams won, the Patriots and the Kansas City Chiefs, and we experienced strong markets.

Finally, in 2021 after a five-year stretch where the indicator kept followers out of the market, it sent the correct signal. The Buccaneers, an NFC team, won, and the market rose about 27%.

2022 Super Bowl

The Rams are the team to pick if you’re long, whereas a Bengal win would indicate the market closes in negative territory.

It’s science, right? Sure, the same quality of science as the Santa Claus Rally that didn’t come last year. Or the sell in May folks that walked away and missed the double-digit rally that occurred through October. Or the more recent “January effect” that forgot it was supposed to lift stocks – the Superbowl indicator may be remarkable, but it probably isn’t useful.

The truth is the ability to predict market direction based on the classification of the team that spills the most Gatorade at the end is more fun than functional. What is functional is a portfolio built with solid blocking and tackling using fundamentals. There is no substitute for lining up the right players for your portfolio, then putting them in play when you think they will contribute best to your holdings. Fundamental analysis combined with any number of entry methods is what builds winning portfolios.

When choosing stocks to add to your line-up this year, let Channelchek do some of your blocking and tackling.  Sign-up for research and articles sent to your inbox throughout the day. And if you want to do some more serious scouting, the NobleCon18 Conference in April is free
to investors.

Paul Hoffman

Managing Editor, Channelchek

 

Suggested Reading

Does the Fed’s Digital Currency Report Indicate They’re Dropping the Ball?

How Lovers Spend Money on Valentine’s Day

Esports: Show me the Money!

Toilet Paper Sales Unravel as Households are Flush with Paper Goods

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Koppett

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_indicator

 

Stay up to date. Follow us:

  Image Credit: Fabricio Trujillo (Pexels)

The Super Bowl Indicator, If You’re Long You May Want to Root For the Rams

 

If you’re choosing between watching
the Olympics or the Super Bowl, this may help. Sunday night around 6pm ET, the
women’s 300M speedskating relay will be competing head-to-head against Bengals
versus Rams. While the Winter Olympics only comes around once every four years
and includes countries from around the world, for investors the annual big football game between the top two cities is considered to be a remarkable harbinger for
market moves.

So if you’re concerned about what the market may do Monday morning and throughout the rest of the year, you may not want to pass up on what’s going on in Los Angeles. Many say the big game has statistical significance to the market returns for the year, and if you’re long stocks, you should be cheering for the Rams, here’s why. The Super Bowl Indicator is considered one of the most consistent market predictors of the stock market. And as most investors today will tell you, the stock market could stand to gain a few yards this year.  After all, even the Dow has returned a negative 2.91% since the beginning of the year.

Football to the Rescue?

In the late 1970s, sportswriter Leonard Koppett discovered a connection between who won the National Football League’s (NFL) championship game and how the stock market did over the following 11 months. Since then, market strategist Robert H. Stovall kept tracking it. Stovall passed away in 2020, but the tradition is alive and well.

At its most basic level, the Super Bowl Indicator predicts that if the winning team is from the National Football Conference (NFC) or was part of the NFL prior to the 1970 merger with the AFL, then stocks will be bullish for the year. If victory instead goes to the team that comes from the AFC, then the market will be bearish over the remainder of the year.

From 1967-2015, the indicator was accurate 40 times out of 49 years. That’s an accuracy rate of 82%. Hard to beat that however, over the past six years, the indicator has given some false readings. As of the 2021 Super Bowl, the indicator lost some of its magic and has been right 41 out of 55 games, that’s a 75% win rate.

During the years 2016 and 2017, when two AFC teams won, the Denver Broncos and the New England Patriots, the market defied the indicator and rose. Then in 2018, when the Philadelphia Eagles won, an NFC team, the market fell.

During the 2019 and 2020 Super Bowls, two more AFC teams won, the Patriots and the Kansas City Chiefs, and we experienced strong markets.

Finally, in 2021 after a five-year stretch where the indicator kept followers out of the market, it sent the correct signal. The Buccaneers, an NFC team, won, and the market rose about 27%.

2022 Super Bowl

The Rams are the team to pick if you’re long, whereas a Bengal win would indicate the market closes in negative territory.

It’s science, right? Sure, the same quality of science as the Santa Claus Rally that didn’t come last year. Or the sell in May folks that walked away and missed the double-digit rally that occurred through October. Or the more recent “January effect” that forgot it was supposed to lift stocks – the Superbowl indicator may be remarkable, but it probably isn’t useful.

The truth is the ability to predict market direction based on the classification of the team that spills the most Gatorade at the end is more fun than functional. What is functional is a portfolio built with solid blocking and tackling using fundamentals. There is no substitute for lining up the right players for your portfolio, then putting them in play when you think they will contribute best to your holdings. Fundamental analysis combined with any number of entry methods is what builds winning portfolios.

When choosing stocks to add to your line-up this year, let Channelchek do some of your blocking and tackling.  Sign-up for research and articles sent to your inbox throughout the day. And if you want to do some more serious scouting, the NobleCon18 Conference in April is free
to investors.

Paul Hoffman

Managing Editor, Channelchek

 

Suggested Reading

Does the Fed’s Digital Currency Report Indicate They’re Dropping the Ball?

How Lovers Spend Money on Valentine’s Day

Esports: Show me the Money!

Toilet Paper Sales Unravel as Households are Flush with Paper Goods

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Koppett

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_indicator

 

Stay up to date. Follow us:

Channelchek is the investment community dedicated exclusively to small and micro-cap companies and their industries. Channelchek is the nation’s top free distribution platform dedicated to providing company-sponsored equity research in the small and microcap sectors.

Were now seeking nominations for The 2022 Best Small and Microcap Blog list and also our 2022 Best Vlog for Small and Microcap Investors list. Both are articles that we will publish in March 2022. 

As we move into the new year, we’d like to recognize other top-tier content in both the written and video mediums that also benefit the informational needs of small and microcap investors.

The deadline for submissions is February 22, 2022.

Our annual “Best of…” lists seek to identify and honor bloggers and vloggers who have achieved positions of trust and influence among investors interested in companies with market caps below $3b.

Nominations may be submitted using the links below.

Any individual or organization can submit multiple nominations. Nominations may also be submitted confidentially, as indicated on the form. 

Channelchek’s editorial team may conduct additional research on nominees and their contributions and followers. We may contact nominators and nominees for more information to support a nomination.

We expect to publish both lists, The 2022 Best Small and Microcap Blog list and also our 2022 Best Vlog for Small and Microcap Investors list, during the month of February 2022.  

Make your nomination now.

 Blog / Newsletter Nomination

 Vlog Nomination

	Image Credit: Liz Henry (Flickr)

New York City or Los Angeles? Where You Live Says a Lot About What and When You Tweet

 

The Big Apple versus The Big Orange. The City of Dreams versus The City of Angels. I’m referring, of course, to the ongoing rivalry between New York City and Los Angeles. Hilarious “survey” videos and talk shows will give you one picture of the cities. My colleagues and I decided to take a more serious look at the differences between the cities, so we studied what everyone else was talking about – on Twitter.

We set out to answer a simple research question: Are people who are located near each other likely to tweet about similar things? To do so, we analyzed millions of GPS-enabled tweets across New York City and LA. This type of study – looking at huge amounts of social media traffic by location – is useful for more than tracking pop culture memes in different cities. It could be valuable for understanding many aspects of urban life, including the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

If we were considering the case of a single, small community that takes pride in local events, celebrities, and culture, the answer to our research question would be a resounding “yes.” One challenge in comparing two large, international cities is the reality that globalization has led to unprecedented interaction among multiple cultures and peoples, along with Starbucks and McDonald’s seemingly in every city on the planet.

For cities that are international but also take pride in their uniqueness, the key is teasing out the extent to which local qualities or global culture dominate tweeting behavior. We designed our methods to be precise enough to account for the fact that, contrary to the fun videos, New York City and LA are quite similar. Both have high housing costs, famous educational institutions, hospitals, museums and other cultural establishments, and residents who tend to vote Democratic.

 

Define ‘Close’ and ‘Same’

Our study tackled two problems: There’s no simple definition of “close together,” and it’s difficult to say whether two tweets are about the same topic. We combined several definitions of “close together,” ranging from people located in the same city to the distance in miles between their coordinates, using a common formula from spatial sciences.

It’s more difficult to determine whether two tweets are talking about similar things. Looking for common hashtags might suffice, but unfortunately many people do not use hashtags or use different hashtags when talking about the same thing. To overcome this problem, we used state-of-the-art natural language processing technology. Algorithms developed in this field read and interpret sentences in a manner similar to the way humans do, and they are able to deal with nuance.

We used this technology to group tweets into clusters of topics. We then studied whether tweets falling inside the same cluster were also from people who were close together based on their GPS-enabled tweets. This allowed us to determine, for example, that clusters containing art-related words and phrases tended to arise more often in New York than LA.

 

Health and Wealth Versus Art and Representing

Even before we looked at who tweets about what, we found tweeting across New York City to be more evenly spread, while in LA, more tweeting happens in wealthier areas, including Calabasas – home to Kim Kardashian – Palos Verdes, West Hollywood and the coastal areas.

We also found that New Yorkers referred to themselves and their city far more often than Angelenos did. On a per capita basis, New Yorkers like to talk about art, while Angelenos like to talk about health care and hospitality.

LA generates more tweets than New York throughout the day, despite having a smaller population, but from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. local time, the two have comparable numbers of tweets. Tweeting in New York City rises sharply from 8 p.m. to a peak at 9 p.m., whereas tweeting in LA rises steadily from 2 p.m. to a peak at 7 p.m.

 

 

Computational Social Science

 

 

Our methods are a case study in the growing field of computational social science, which aims to find insights in unique, often large, data sets using artificial intelligence models and algorithms. In contrast, traditional social science tends to rely on surveys and polls to quantify public perception about an issue. Though surveys have some distinct statistical advantages, they can be expensive and time-consuming to use for collecting quality data with good response rates.

For example, Gallup releases new survey data every few months and currently charges US$30,000 for academic licenses. Decades ago, researchers found that monetary incentives increase response rates significantly. Even today, online surveys are often accompanied by lottery-based promises of receiving an Amazon gift card. Researchers are working on combining the benefits of traditional and computational social science.

Zooming into our data, we uncovered some fascinating trends that we hope future research will explore. We found, for example, that on a per capita basis, as crime increases, so do tweets, at least at the level of ZIP codes. Why do high-crime areas tweet more? We don’t know yet, but the trend is consistent across both New York City and LA.

 

Tweeting, Place and COVID-19

Studying tweeting behavior by location could also be useful for understanding disparate outcomes of large-scale events. For example, our twitter analysis could help shed light on how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected people in different places.

New York City was hit hard by COVID-19 early on, showing that even major cities were affected in different ways by this terrible pandemic. New reporting is now showing that even within cities, socioeconomically disadvantaged communities were disproportionately burdened.

Recently, we released a Twitter data set covering 10 of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States to further study such disparities using computational social science. We are already using our methods across all of these cities to better understand how COVID-19 has affected certain groups, and the levels of expressed vaccine hesitancy among these groups.

Eventually, we hope to use our methods with a large set of international metropolises to study urban behavior.

 

This article was republished with permission from The Conversation, a news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.  It was written by and represents the research-based opinions and findings of Mayank Kejriwal Research Assistant Professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering, University of Southern California.

 

Suggested Reading:

Bond Market Understanding is Again Critical fo Stock Investors	Why Gain-of-Function Research is Being Conducted

Workcations Add a New Class of Traveller	Michael Burry Again Closes His Twitter Account

 

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image credit: Tomruen/WikimediaCommons, CC BY-SA

Supermoon! Red Blood Lunar Eclipse! It’s all Happening Tonight – Here is what it Means

 

The first lunar eclipse of 2021 is going to happen during the early hours of May 26. But this is going to be an especially super lunar event, as it will be a supermoon, a lunar eclipse and a red blood moon all at once. So what does this all mean?

The Moon appears 12% bigger when it is closest to Earth compared with its appearance when it’s farthest away

 

What’s a super moon?

A supermoon occurs when a full or new moon coincides with the Moon’s closest approach to the Earth.

The Moon’s orbit is not a perfect circle as it slowly rotates around Earth. Rfassbind/WikimediaCommons

The Moon’s orbit around Earth is not perfectly circular. This means the Moon’s distance from Earth varies as it goes around the planet. The closest point in the orbit, called the perigee, is roughly 28,000 miles closer to Earth than the farthest point of the orbit. A full moon that happens near the perigee is called a supermoon.

So why is it super? The relatively close proximity of the Moon makes it seem a little bit bigger and brighter than usual, though the difference between a supermoon and a normal moon is usually hard to notice unless you’re looking at two pictures side by side.

The phases of the Moon correspond to how much of the lit–up side you can see from Earth. Orion 8/WikimediaCommons, CC BY-SA

 

How does a lunar eclipse work?

A lunar eclipse happens when the Earth’s shadow covers all or part of the Moon. This can only happen during a full moon, so first, it helps to understand what makes a full moon.

Like the Earth, half of the Moon is illuminated by the sun at any one time. A full moon happens when the Moon and the Sun are on opposite sides of the Earth. This allows you see the entire lit-up side, which looks like a round disc in the night sky.

If the Moon had a totally flat orbit, every full moon would be a lunar eclipse. But the Moon’s orbit is tilted by about 5 degrees relative to Earth’s orbit. So, most of the time a full moon ends up a little above or below the shadow cast by the Earth.

A lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes through Earth’s shadow. Sagredo/WikimediaCommons

But twice in each lunar orbit, the Moon is on the same horizontal plane as both the Earth and Sun. If this corresponds to a full moon, the Sun, the Earth and the Moon will form a straight line and the Moon will pass through the Earth’s shadow. This results in a total lunar eclipse.

To see a lunar eclipse, you need to be on the night side of the Earth while the Moon passes through the shadow. The best place to see the eclipse on May 26, 2021, will be the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Australia, the East Coast of Asia and the West Coast of the Americas. It will be visible on the eastern half of the U.S., but only the very earliest stages before the Moon sets.

The Earth’s atmosphere gives the Moon a blood-red glow during total lunar eclipses. Irvin Calicut/WikimediaCommons, CC BY-SA

 

Why does the moon look red?

When the Moon is completely covered by Earth’s shadow it will darken, but doesn’t go completely black. Instead, it takes on a red color, which is why total lunar eclipses are sometimes called red or blood moons.

Sunlight contains all colors of visible light. The particles of gas that make up Earth’s atmosphere are more likely to scatter blue wavelengths of light while redder wavelengths pass through. This is called Rayleigh scattering, and it’s why the sky is blue and sunrises and sunsets are often red.

In the case of a lunar eclipse, red light can pass through the Earth’s atmosphere and is refracted – or bent – toward the Moon, while blue light is filtered out. This leaves the moon with a pale reddish hue during an eclipse.

Hopefully you will be able to go see this super lunar eclipse. When you do, now you will know exactly what makes for such a special sight.

 

This article was republished with permission from The
Conversation, a news
site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.  Written by Shannon Schmoll Director, Abrams Planetarium, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University

 

 

Stay up to date. Follow us:

Stay up to date. Follow us:

image credit: Tomruen/WikimediaCommons, CC BY-SA

Supermoon! Red Blood Lunar Eclipse! It’s all Happening Tonight – Here is what it Means

 

The first lunar eclipse of 2021 is going to happen during the early hours of May 26. But this is going to be an especially super lunar event, as it will be a supermoon, a lunar eclipse and a red blood moon all at once. So what does this all mean?

The Moon appears 12% bigger when it is closest to Earth compared with its appearance when it’s farthest away

 

What’s a super moon?

A supermoon occurs when a full or new moon coincides with the Moon’s closest approach to the Earth.

The Moon’s orbit is not a perfect circle as it slowly rotates around Earth. Rfassbind/WikimediaCommons

The Moon’s orbit around Earth is not perfectly circular. This means the Moon’s distance from Earth varies as it goes around the planet. The closest point in the orbit, called the perigee, is roughly 28,000 miles closer to Earth than the farthest point of the orbit. A full moon that happens near the perigee is called a supermoon.

So why is it super? The relatively close proximity of the Moon makes it seem a little bit bigger and brighter than usual, though the difference between a supermoon and a normal moon is usually hard to notice unless you’re looking at two pictures side by side.

The phases of the Moon correspond to how much of the lit–up side you can see from Earth. Orion 8/WikimediaCommons, CC BY-SA

 

How does a lunar eclipse work?

A lunar eclipse happens when the Earth’s shadow covers all or part of the Moon. This can only happen during a full moon, so first, it helps to understand what makes a full moon.

Like the Earth, half of the Moon is illuminated by the sun at any one time. A full moon happens when the Moon and the Sun are on opposite sides of the Earth. This allows you see the entire lit-up side, which looks like a round disc in the night sky.

If the Moon had a totally flat orbit, every full moon would be a lunar eclipse. But the Moon’s orbit is tilted by about 5 degrees relative to Earth’s orbit. So, most of the time a full moon ends up a little above or below the shadow cast by the Earth.

A lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes through Earth’s shadow. Sagredo/WikimediaCommons

But twice in each lunar orbit, the Moon is on the same horizontal plane as both the Earth and Sun. If this corresponds to a full moon, the Sun, the Earth and the Moon will form a straight line and the Moon will pass through the Earth’s shadow. This results in a total lunar eclipse.

To see a lunar eclipse, you need to be on the night side of the Earth while the Moon passes through the shadow. The best place to see the eclipse on May 26, 2021, will be the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Australia, the East Coast of Asia and the West Coast of the Americas. It will be visible on the eastern half of the U.S., but only the very earliest stages before the Moon sets.

The Earth’s atmosphere gives the Moon a blood-red glow during total lunar eclipses. Irvin Calicut/WikimediaCommons, CC BY-SA

 

Why does the moon look red?

When the Moon is completely covered by Earth’s shadow it will darken, but doesn’t go completely black. Instead, it takes on a red color, which is why total lunar eclipses are sometimes called red or blood moons.

Sunlight contains all colors of visible light. The particles of gas that make up Earth’s atmosphere are more likely to scatter blue wavelengths of light while redder wavelengths pass through. This is called Rayleigh scattering, and it’s why the sky is blue and sunrises and sunsets are often red.

In the case of a lunar eclipse, red light can pass through the Earth’s atmosphere and is refracted – or bent – toward the Moon, while blue light is filtered out. This leaves the moon with a pale reddish hue during an eclipse.

Hopefully you will be able to go see this super lunar eclipse. When you do, now you will know exactly what makes for such a special sight.

 

This article was republished with permission from The
Conversation, a news
site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.  Written by Shannon Schmoll Director, Abrams Planetarium, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University

 

 

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