Space and Physics
PUBLISHED
It has been an exciting few weeks for the Moon. Last month, there was a total lunar eclipse with a beautiful "Blood Moon". Not content with being center stage across the Americas, it also obscured the Sun in a partial solar eclipse only two weeks ago. This weekend, the full Moon is back again, and this time it will be a little on the small side.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.In fact, it will be the smallest it has been in five years. That's because it’s time for a "micromoon".
This is the opposite situation of a supermoon. During a supermoon, the full Moon is closer, so our natural satellite can appear to have a 14 percent increase in size and a 30 percent increase in brightness, according to NASA; during a micromoon, the full Moon is instead a bit dimmer and smaller.
The orbit of the Moon around the Earth is not circular. It’s elliptical, so the Moon sometimes gets closer and sometimes gets further away from the Earth. The orbit also moves around the Earth, so the closest point – the perigee – and the farthest point – the apogee – don’t always happen at the same time.
Sometimes they happen during the full Moon. A full Moon near perigee is a supermoon, while a full Moon near the apogee is a micromoon. Depending on the definition used, there can be up to five supermoons and up to three micromoons any given year.
The upcoming full Moon will happen on Sunday, April 13, at 1:22 am UTC. At that moment, the Moon will be 406,006 kilometers (252,280 miles) away from Earth. This is the furthest away a full Moon has been since the Halloween Blue Moon of 2020. May is also set to have a micromoon, but it will be about 800 kilometers (497 miles) closer.
However, it won't be long before this weekend's record is going to be broken. Almost every year in the next 12 years will have a micromoon that is further away – excluding 2027, 2031, and 2032 – with the farthest being September 24, 2037, with a full Moon a whopping 406,383 kilometers (252,515 miles) away.
And it’s good news that the full Moon is happening this weekend, as that means it won’t have as much impact during the peak of the forthcoming Lyrids meteor shower.
