NEW YORK\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The moon will look slightly bigger and brighter Wednesday night during the closest supermoon of the year.<\/p>\n
The moon\u2019s orbit around the Earth isn\u2019t a perfect circle, so it gets nearer and farther as it swings around. A so-called supermoon happens when a full moon is closer to Earth in its orbit. That makes the moon look up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter than the faintest moon of the year, according to NASA. <\/p>\n
November\u2019s supermoon is the second of three supermoons this year and also the closest: The moon will come within just under 222,000 miles (357,000 kilometers) of Earth. <\/p>\n
Tides may be slightly higher during a supermoon because the moon is closer to Earth, said astronomer Lawrence Wasserman with Lowell Observatory. But the difference isn\u2019t very noticeable.<\/p>\n
No special equipment is needed to view the supermoon if clear skies permit. But the change in the moon\u2019s size can be tough to discern with the naked eye.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe difference is most obvious as a comparison between other images or observations,\u201d said Shannon Schmoll, director of Abrams Planetarium at Michigan State University, in an email.<\/p>\n
Supermoons happen a few times a year. One in October made the moon look somewhat larger, and another in December will be the last of the year.<\/p>\n
Ramakrishnan writes for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The moon will look slightly bigger and brighter Wednesday night during the closest supermoon of the year.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[9584,92808,16927,45374,6599,18,92811,19,17,92812,13566,10626,92807,17210,92809,133,92810,59335,3257],"class_list":{"0":"post-159528","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-observation","9":"tag-abrams-planetarium","10":"tag-difference","11":"tag-director","12":"tag-earth","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-few-time","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-lowell-observatory","18":"tag-michigan-state-university","19":"tag-moon","20":"tag-november","21":"tag-orbit","22":"tag-other-image","23":"tag-science","24":"tag-shannon-schmoll","25":"tag-supermoon","26":"tag-year"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115482691085803524","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}