Supermoon: The largest and brightest moon of 2023
- This will be the second supermoon in August. The first one appeared on August 1
Supermoon, a very rare event can be seen on Wednesday night. It is one of the largest and brightest moon of 2023.
A supermoon is broadly defined as a full moon that is closer to the Earth than normal. That makes it appear slightly brighter and bigger in the sky.
This will be the second supermoon in August. The first one appeared on August 1.
Another rare event in the sky will also be visible on Wednesday. Saturn will be visible as a bright point 5 degrees to the upper right of the moon at sunset in the east-southeastern sky, according to NASA.
And as it is a rare event, it can be referred to as a ‘blue moon’. A blue moon has nothing to do with the colour of the moon.
The Supermoon on Wednesday will be the closest full moon of the year 2023, just 222,043 miles (357,344 kilometers) away. That’s more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) closer than the August 1 supermoon.
The Supermoon will be at its brightest at 9:30 pm (IST) on Wednesday, and the Blue Super Moon will be at its brightest around 7:30 am (IST) on August 31.
“About 25 percent of all full moons are supermoons, but only 3 percent of full moons are blue moons,” wrote NASA scientists on the Earth’s Moon website.
“The time between super blue moons is quite irregular ― it can be as much as 20 years ― but in general, 10 years is the average. The next super blue moons will occur in a pair, in January and March 2037,” according to a report by New York Post.
The supermoon also casts 30% more light on Earth compared to the dimmest full moon, said the report.
A supermoon occurs every two and a half years on average.
According to London’s Natural History Museum, the supermoon is occurs when the moon is at perigee, its closest distance to the Earth, and it appears 14% larger than the micromoon, when the moon is away from the Earth on its elliptical orbit.
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First Published:30 Aug 2023, 08:48 PM IST
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