The night sky will be extra brighter next month with two supermoons set to rise in August.
The first one will be on Tuesday, August 1, and the next celestial treat – which will be the biggest and brightest supermoon of 2023 – will happen on August 30.
In Dubai, there is a Supermoon Observation Event that will be organised by Dubai Astronomy Group (DAG) on Tuesday from 7pm to 9pm at Al Thuraya Astronomy Centre, Mushrif Park. The special skywatching event is open for free to all DAG members and the public for a certain fee.
There will be a Q&A session about supermoons, telescope observation, and phone photography of the Moon through DAG telescopes.
According to DAG, a supermoon is a full moon or a new moon that nearly coincides with perigee—the closest that the Moon comes to the Earth in its elliptic orbit—resulting in a slightly larger-than-usual apparent size of the lunar disk as viewed from Earth.
Supermoon, in a nutshell, is the time when the Moon is closest to us in its orbit. A supermoon appears bigger and brighter in the sky because it exceeds the disk size of an average-sized Moon by up to 8 per cent and the brightness of an average-sized full Moon by around 16 per cent.
There are actually four supermoons in a row this year and the August 1 supermoon – called full Sturgeon Moon – is the second supermoon of 2023. It got its name from US-based Old Farmer’s Almanac (a reference containing weather forecasts, planting charts, astronomical data, recipes, and articles).
August’s full moon is traditionally called Sturgeon Moon because the giant sturgeon of the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain in North America are widely caught during this part of summer.
Later in August, a second full Moon or Blue Moon will make an appearance. The term Blue Moon is used to refer to having two full moons in a single month.
According to astronomers, the August 30-31 supermoon will be the closest, biggest, and brightest full supermoon of 2023. That time, the Moon will be 357,343 kilometres away from Earth. The next closer full supermoon will be on November 5, 2025, when the moon is 356,979km away from Earth.
