The night sky is set to be illuminated this weekend by what will appear to be a much bigger and brighter Moon. The so-called “supermoon” occurs when the Moon reaches its closest point to earth, known as a perigee full moon. The effect makse the Moon seem 30% bigger and 14% brighter than when it is furthest from the planet.
Skywatchers who miss the phenomenon this weekend because of cloudy skies will have to wait until August 2014 for the next one.
The average distance of the moon from the Earth is 238,000 miles. On Sunday morning, it will be just 221,824 miles away – or 16,176 miles closer than usual.
Michelle Thaller, assistant director of science at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, talks about the Supermoon
Writing in Sky and Telescope about the “myth of the supermoon”, Shari Balouchi said much of what we called the supermoon was just our eyes playing tricks on us.
“The supermoon might look bigger than normal if you see it in the evening when the Moon’s just rising, but the real size difference isn’t big enough to notice,” she said.
Supermoons occur about once annually, and this year, the supermoon is closer than it has been in a little while.
You don’t have to plan anything fancy to see the largest full moon of the year. Stepping outside and looking up at the sky will do just fine. You probably won’t discern any major difference in the size of the moon this weekend – though you may notice it is shining extra brightly.
SLOOH are running a live webcast of the supermoon beginning on Sunday beginning at 9 p.m. EDT (0100 June 24 GMT) (you can get SLOOH Mission Cards here).
Although it might be a brilliant skywatching opportunity, not a lot of scientific research comes from the supermoon. Scientists prefer to study the moon from a closer vantage point. However, they have dismissed the idea that the perigee can cause strange behavior, like lycanthropy or natural disasters.
Filed under: The Moon
