No matter where you were on Sunday night you couldn’t escape this lovely Supermoon. NASA says the Supermoon was up to 14% larger and 30% brighter than a typical full moon. Astronomers call this sort of close full moon a perigee full moon. The word perigee describes the moon’s closest point to Earth for a given month. Two years ago, when the closest and largest full moon fell on March 19, 2011, many used the term Supermoon, which we’d never heard before. Last year, we heard this term again to describe the year’s closest full moon on May 6, 2012. Now the term Supermoon is being used a lot. Last month’s full moon – May 24-25, 2013 – was also a Supermoon. But the June full moon was even more super! In other words, the time of full moon falls even closer to the time of perigee, the moon’s closest point to Earth. The crest of the moon’s full phase in June 2013, and perigee, fell within an hour of each other. The moon was just 356,991 km. The next time it will be this close is August 10, 2014. David F. Rooney photo
