In this tough time, any good news is a breath of freshness and any distraction is the source of going forward. And you indeed are going to experience a beautiful distracted tomorrow, i.e. April 8. Tomorrow night, the sky will have a ‘super pink Moon’.
It won’t be pink, but it will appear to be the biggest and brightest of all the full Moons of 2020 – those points every 29-and-a-half days when Earth is right between the Moon and the Sun, meaning we get to see the Moon completely lit up.
It will be a perfect example of a supermoon and full Moon together. The scientists have shared that the Moon will be in perigee: the closest possible point to us in its elliptic orbit, a mere 357,035 kilometers or 221,851 miles away from Earth.
A supermoon can appear 7 percent larger than a normal full Moon, and 15 percent brighter, too. That’s pretty interesting for astronomers, even if the difference may not always seem dramatic from Earth – we can’t easily compare full Moons side by side.
Even if it’s not going to loom pink, we think looking up at the night skies to appreciate the bright ball may give us all a little time of respite from worrying about these trying times that we’re all going through.
The pink supermoon will be visible in the night skies over Australia on the evening of Wednesday 8 April. If you’re following in the UK, the brightness peak will be in the early hours of April 8, and for the US, the best time to get out and lookup is the evening of Tuesday 7 April.
As it happens, we’re actually in the middle of a run of supermoons right now, with March, April and May all having one. If you miss this one, you won’t have to wait long for the next chance.
This is also going to be the first full moon after the equinox, the first full moon of spring (in the northern hemisphere) – this is how the date of Easter is set each year, which is why this coming Sunday is Easter Sunday.
