Within the same hour on August 10, the crest of the Moon’s full phase will coincide with its perigee - its closest encounter with Earth for the entire year - making this a super supermoon.
The upcoming supermoon will be one of 2014's largest and brightest full moons. According to CNN, the Moon will be as much as 12 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than it was back in January. It will occur at 2:09 pm EDT on August 10, and for Australians, 4:09 am AEST on August 11.
The concept of a supermoon was first defined in 1979 by astrologer Richard Nolle, describing it as “A new or full moon which occurs with the moon at or near (within 90% of) its closest approach to Earth in a given orbit.”
Every year, we experience four to six supermoons on average, and our last one this year was on June 13. But what makes this month’s supermoon particularly special is that it happens to coincide with the Moon’s pedigree - its closest point to the Earth. So on August 10/11, not only do we get to see the closet and largest full moon for 2014, we’ll also see the Moon reach its closest encounter with Earth for at least the next 12 months. The Moon won’t be as close as this again till 28 September 2015.
"At perigee, the Moon lies only 356,896 kilometres (221,765 miles) away,” says EarthSky.com of the August 10/11 event. "Two weeks before, on July 28, the moon swung out to apogee – its farthest point for the month and year – at 406,567 kilometres (252,629 miles) distant.
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