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 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":114789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[81735,11662,3936,3146,81739,81740,81738,8036,111,139,12885,69,38237,35923,81736,147,81737,42512,379],"class_list":["post-114788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-abrams-planetarium","tag-difference","tag-director","tag-earth","tag-few-time","tag-lowell-observatory","tag-michigan-state-university","tag-moon","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-november","tag-nz","tag-observation","tag-orbit","tag-other-image","tag-science","tag-shannon-schmoll","tag-supermoon","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}