A blue supermoon will light up skies around the world this week. The lunar event, which NASA called “irregular”, will be visible until early Wednesday morning. WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: How to catch the rare supermoon this week.
Know the news with the 7NEWS app: Download today The supermoon occurs when a full moon is at its closest point to Earth in its elliptical orbit, according to NASA . A blue moon does not refer to the shade of the moon, instead, it is the name for a second full moon in a calendar month. The best time to see the moon was Tuesday morning — but you can still see it in the evening.
On Tuesday, astrophysicist Brad Tucker spoke about the celestial event on Sunrise. “The supermoon is when we have a moon closer to the Earth , so the orbit varies by 45,000 or so kilometres (as it is oval-shaped), which is quite a bit ..
. so when it’s closer to the Earth, it’s bigger and brighter,” Tucker said. “The full moon rises at sunset, so you get the full moon rising, that already looks big, and you have a somewhat bigger moon so often it can ‘wow’ people as it is rising, if you have clear weather.
” Stargazers can expect the moon to look reddish, rather than blue, according to Tucker. “In a season, you usually have three full moons (one a month). But sometimes you get four full moons in a season, and we call the third moon, a blue moon.
So, ‘once in a blue moon’ is the rarity of having an extra (full) moon.” Tucker said he did not expect people t.