Supermoon Lights Up the Evening Sky

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The biggest and brightest full moon of the year, also known as Supermoon arrives Saturday night  (May 5, 2012) as our celestial neighbor passes closer to Earth than usual.The moon's distance from Earth varies because it follows an elliptical orbit rather than a circular one.

Saturday's event is a "supermoon," the closest and therefore the biggest and brightest full moon of the year. At 11:34 p.m., the moon is about 221,802 miles from Earth. That's about 15,300 miles closer than average.

That proximity will make the moon appear about 14 percent bigger than it would if the moon were at its farthest distance, said Geoff Chester of the U.S. Naval Observatory. The difference in appearance is so small that "you'd be very hard-pressed to detect that with the unaided eye," he said.