This month's full moon came the closest to Earth that it has been since 1948. Skywatchers and astrophotographers flocked to see the big, bright moon in all of its glory Sunday night (Nov. 13).

The full supermoon peaked this morning (Nov. 14) at 8:52 a.m. EST (1352 GMT), but it will still look "super" for about a day after its maximum. So if you haven't seen it yet, there's still some time to go check it out.

But just in case you aren't able to see the supermoon, Space.com has you covered. You can still watch last night's live webcast of the supermoon to see videos of the enlarged moon and hear the experts discuss what makes it so super. Or check out more awesome photos of the supermoon by Space.com's superfans in our supermoon photo gallery.

Photographer Chris Cook took a self-portrait with what he called the "super-duper full moon" in the background on Sunday evening in Eastham, Massachusetts. Cook said that as the moon was rising, "it didn't look any bigger than other moonrises, but once it got higher in the sky later that night it did seem larger than a full moon at apogee," or the point in the moon's orbit at which it is farthest from Earth.

The difference in size between the supermoon and other full moons can be difficult to see — it only appears about 14 percent larger than usual. To offer some comparison with other full moons, photographer Bill Hood created the composite image that's shown above.

In some other photos, the supermoon did appear much larger than an ordinary full moon. With other objects serving as points of reference in a supermoon shot, the moon can look huge!

Photographer Stan Honda captured this photo of a WestJet airliner flying across the face of the supermoon after it took off from LaGuardia Airport in New York on Nov. 13. Honda took the photo from Central Park in Manhattan at 4:50 p.m. EST, while he was taking pictures of the moon along with members of the Amateur Astronomers Association of New York and students from his night-sky photography class.

Honda said that he had not intended to take photos of airplanes when he set out to photograph the supermoon; timing was simply on his side. "The moon had just cleared the top of the building when I saw a plane flying towards the moon," he said. "I waited until the plane was just entering the disk and tripped the shutter."

Photographers waiting for a chance to get out and photograph another big and bright full moon need not wait long. December's full moon will also be "super" — albeit less super than November's full moon.

Source:
courtesy of SPACE

by Hanneke Weitering

If you have any stories or news that you would like to share with the global online community, please feel free to share it with us by contacting us directly at [email protected]