Supermoon

When the moon gets closest to the Earth in its orbit, it appears bigger and brighter than usual and is called a supermoon.

A supermoon can look up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter than a regular monthly full moon.

A supermoon appears up to 14% larger and 30% brighter than a normal full moon.

A full moon appears approximately once a month. When the moon gets closest to the Earth in its orbit, it appears bigger and brighter than usual and is called a supermoon.

Most years have 12 full moons, but this year has 13, three of them supermoons. The May supermoon, known in the United States as the Flower Supermoon, follows the Pink Supermoon from April and another one in March.

And should the moon happen to hit its ever-shifting orbital perigee at the same time that it lies athwart from the sun, we are treated to a so-called supermoon, a full moon that can seem close enough to embrace – as much as 12 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than the average full moon. […] Some astronomers dislike the whole supermoon hoopla. They point out that the term originated with astrology, not astronomy; that perigee full moons are not all that rare, coming an average of every 13 months; and that their apparently swollen dimensions are often as much a matter of optical illusion and wishful blinking as of relative lunar nearness.