DHAKA: A supermoon will light up the skies above the globe on Sunday night. It’ll be the closest, brightest supermoon of this year. It also presents the moon’s closest encounter with Earth for all of 2014.

Closer to the earth than it has been in over twenty years, stargazers will see a moon 14 per cent bigger and 30 per cent brighter than usual.

Full moon falls on  the day at 18:09 UTC (1:09 p.m. CDT in the U.S.). The moon will not be so close again until the full moon of September 28, 2015. In other words, it’s not just a supermoon. It’s the closest supermoon of 2014.

At United States’ time zones, the moon will turn full on August 10 at 2:09 p.m. EDT, 1:09 p.m. CDT, 12:09 p.m. MDT and 11:09 a.m. PDT.

According to astronomers, Sunday will see the moon closer to earth than it has been in the last 20 years. For just 26 minutes at around 6.10pm (British time), the moon will reach its full perigee stage, taking it to within 221,765 miles of earth.

Sunday’s supermoon will also coincide with the Perseid meteor shower, a yearly occurrence that will see more than 100 meteors appear in our skies over the weekend.

We astronomers call this sort of close full moon a perigee full moon. The word perigee describes the moon’s closest point to Earth for a given month. Three years ago, when the closest and largest full moon fell on March 19, 2011, many used the term supermoon, which we’d never heard before. In the following years, we heard this term again to describe the year’s closest full moon on May 6, 2012, and again on June 23, 2013. Now the term supermoon is being used a lot. Last month’s full moon – on June 13, 2014 – was also a supermoon. But the August full moon is even more super! In other words, the time of full moon falls even closer to the time of perigee, the moon’s closest point to Earth. The crest of the moon’s full phase in August 10, and perigee, fall within the same hour.

What is a supermoon?

The scientific name for a "supermoon" is a perigee moon, perigee meaning “closest point to earth”. It refers to the phenomenon when the moon is in its “full moon” stage, and at its closest point to earth during its yearly orbit. With the moon being closer, it appears far bigger and far brighter. Estimates believe that this Sunday’s supermoon will appear over 14 per cent bigger and 30 per cent brighter to stargazers below.

Source: earthsky.org

BDST: 1022 HRS, AUG 10, 2014