ARCHIVE / HERE COMES SUPER MOON

NASA photographer Bill Ingalls snapped the last "Super Moon"
on Feb. 7, 2012 as a U.S. Marine Corps chopper zips by the U.S. Capitol

EDITOR'S NOTE: Public can share Super Moon photos with National Geographic.  Info:
http://on.natgeo.com/12Uy8B5

GUEST BLOG—By Michigan Radio Newsroom--On June 23, you can see a moon that's looks bigger than it usually does. It's called a supermoon, and they occur between four and six times every year.

Basically, it happens when the moon comes closer to Earth than it normally does.

According to earthsky.org, astronomers call this phenomenon a "perigee full moon. The word perigee describes the moon's closest point to Earth for a given month."

"The time of the full moon falls even closer to the time of the perigee," Earthsky wrote. That means that the moon will be even bigger. June's supermoon is the closest that the moon will be to Earth for the whole 2013 year.

Miriam Kramer of CBS News wrote that the moon will appear the closest on Sunday at 7:32 a.m. EST.

"At its closest on Sunday, the moon will be about 221,824 miles (356,991 kilometers) from Earth. On average, the moon is about 238,900 miles (384,402 kilometers) from the Earth.

Though it will be the closest to Earth on Sunday morning, it will still be very bright and appear slightly larger than normal on Saturday night (June 22). Either time will be a good time to check it out.

Or, if you don't want to go outside at all, watch the live webcast on Sunday from space.com:

SPACE CADET MEMO:

If you're reading this on Saturday, 6-22 please note over San Diego (HQ of this blog), the International Space Station will be flying overhead at 9:33 pm for about 2 minutes.  The ISS will appear out of the NNW sky at about 51 degrees (over head is 90 degrees, 45 degrees is street level) and will disappear too the East.  Clouds allowing.