The moon will appear larger and brighter on Sunday night, the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration has said. Known as the “supermoon”, the moon will appear about 7% larger and 15% brighter.
“A supermoon is a moon that is full when it is also at or near its closest point in its orbit around the earth,” Nasa said on its website. The full moon on Sunday will be 2,22,761 miles (3,59,499 kilometres) from earth, closer than its average 2,38,900 miles (3,84,472 kilometres), BBC reported.
In India, the exact moment of the supermoon – that is when the full moon is at its biggest and brightest – will be at 9.17 pm Indian Standard Time (3.47 pm Greenwich Mean Time). “The supermoons are a great opportunity for people to start looking at the moon, not just that once but every chance they have,” Noah Petro, a research scientist at Nasa said.
Apart from Sunday, Nasa said that the supermoon will also be visible on January 1, 2018, and January 31, 2018 – in what it described as a “supermoon trilogy”.
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