Excited stargazers wait for year’s only visible supermoon on December 3

This Sunday night, stargazers and sky-watchers will have their eyes glued to the sky to witness the first and the last visible supermoon of 2017.

As per astronomers, the supermoon phenomenon is extremely popular with sky-watchers and has sky watchers community excited across the globe.

“The supermoon occurs when the full moon is closest to the earth, thus appearing bigger and brighter. During this period the moon appears about 14 percent bigger and about 30 percent brighter than normal full moon as seen from Earth,” explained Arvind Paranjpye, Director of Nehru Planetarium.

Interestingly, supermoons have different names based on months and the ones occurring in December are called the ‘Cold Moon’.

He shared that enthusiasts can look at the supermoon on December 3 (which is the full moon day) and during this time the distance between the earth and moon would be around 3.75 lakh kilometres.

“The moon revolves round the Earth in an called elliptical orbit, thus as the Moon goes round the Earth its distance from the Earth keeps varying and at the point where the distance becomes closest the moon appears the biggest,” shared Paranjpye adding that, however, supermoon is not the technical term (the technical term used is perigee …read more