How much it moves is actually quite difficult to determine, as the gravitational effects of the sun and the earth and the slightly elliptical orbit of the moon all play into exactly how long it takes the moon to revolve once around the earth. 29.5 days is about the average, so we'll use that. If we take the 360* of one orbit and divide it by 29.5 days, we come up with an average movement of 12.2* per day. Breaking it down further we can divide that 12.2* by the 24 hours of the day and see that the moon is moving eastward at about .51* per hour. This can be seen in the telescope on a good night when the moon is near to some reasonably bright stars and we can watch it close in and cover the stars (also known as an occultation). On an exceptional night, the moon will be close enough to a really bright star (most recently it's been Aldebaran) and we can watch it happen with just the naked eye.
So why do I bring this all up, you ask? Well, as happenstance would have it, I stumbled across the opportunity to collect a series of photos of the moon in the morning sky that were all taken at nearly the exact time of day (within 2 minutes). The result was a vivid graphic of the moon's movement across the sky. I say "stumbled", because I just happened to be driving to work on the morning of December 14th when I saw the setting Supermoon just kissing the horizon. Pulled over, whipped out phone, click, cool photo.
Then it happened again the next day - at the exact same time of morning. The waning gibbous moon was much higher in the sky but it still looked cool. Pulled over, whipped out phone, click, another cool photo.
Then it happened again the next day. That's when it dawned on me that this could make for a cool sequence photo, so that's what I did. The first three images show the original shots. The last photo is the composite of all three with a bunch of layering/aligning/blending/yada -yada. If the distances between the moons doesn't look exact like you'd think it should, let's blame the fact that I'm using a phone camera and with it's million-mile wide lens you have a tendency to lose things like exact perspectives, ok?
Behold, the movement of the moon:
The setting Supermoon, December14'16,;
The waning gibbous moon, December15'16;
The waning gibbous moon, December16'16;
The three images composited;
