{"id":324529,"date":"2025-12-01T18:33:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T18:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/324529\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T18:33:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T18:33:07","slug":"how-to-spot-the-december-supermoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/324529\/","title":{"rendered":"How to spot the December supermoon"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 The last supermoon<\/a> of the year will shine soon in December skies.<\/p>\n

The moon\u2019s orbit around the Earth isn\u2019t a perfect circle so it gets nearer and farther as it swings around. When a full moon is closer to Earth<\/a> in its orbit, a so-called supermoon happens. It makes the moon look up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter than the faintest moon of the year, according to NASA.<\/p>\n

Supermoons happen a few times a year in clusters, taking advantage of the sweet spot in the moon\u2019s elliptical orbit, and Thursday night\u2019s event is the last of three in a row<\/a> in 2025.<\/p>\n

The supermoon can be glimpsed in clear night skies without any special equipment. But it can be tough to discern the subtle change with the naked eye.<\/p>\n

Whether a supermoon or not, the moon also appears bigger when it\u2019s close to the horizon because of what\u2019s called the moon illusion. It\u2019s a strange visual trick that experts can\u2019t yet explain.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have a supermoon, that effect is just slightly more striking,\u201d said astronomer William Alston with the University of Hertfordshire.<\/p>\n

Tides could be slightly higher during a supermoon because the moon is closer to Earth, but again, the difference isn\u2019t very noticeable.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute\u2019s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 The last supermoon of the year will shine soon in December skies. The moon\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6626,793,6625,79,9175,1306,795,965],"class_list":{"0":"post-324529","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-astronomy","9":"tag-general-news","10":"tag-planets","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-space-exploration","13":"tag-trending-news","14":"tag-u-s-news","15":"tag-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}