Rama wrote:
[...]

The illusion that the moon is larger when near the horizon than when overhead is
due to humans applying their general expectation about the size of objects in
the sky to a situation in which those expectations are wrong. Birds of a given
size look smaller near the horizon than when overhead, simply because they are
farther away; since the moon appears the same size in both locations [#], we
INTERPRET this as it being bigger near the horizon.

[#] Instruments that measure its angular spread show unambiguously
that the image of the moon has the same angular spread in any given
night.


Tom Roberts