Fly Me to the Supermoom
The Moon's orbit around Earth is not a circle, it's an ellipse. When a full Moon occurs on the near side of the orbit, it looks extra big and bright, and we call it a "supermoon." The first of three supermoons arrived on July 12th:
"This weekend I was on my deck taking some zoom photos of the supermoon when an airplane flew by," says photographer Ralfo Winter. "It was coming in for a landing at New York City."
As explained in a video from Science@NASA, the technical term for this phenomenon is "perigee Moon." A nearby perigee Moon can be 14% bigger and 30% brighter than other full Moons of the year. This kind of Moon is not particularly rare; they come along every 13 months or so. However, this summer we will have three supermoons in a row. The next one is August 12th.
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