Don’t miss this event: the Super Harvest Moon which will take place this Friday, September 29, is the last of the year 2023. What exactly does this phenomenon correspond to?
The full Harvest Moon on September 29, 2023 doubles as a supermoon. If the weather is good, the meeting promises a beautiful spectacle. For observers with binoculars or a camera, the lunar disk will appear not only slightly larger in the night sky but also a little brighter than usual. This year, there will be four supermoons in succession. The first took place in July, August had two in a row, and here is the last one taking place in September. To admire the next one, you will have to wait almost a year with the “Super Sturgeon Moon” which will take place on August 19, 2024. Let’s take stock of this astronomical event which only repeats three to four times per year.
To admire this last super Moon of the year, you will have to wait for sunset around 7:30 p.m. The Moon will then rise above the horizon and will be clearly visible in the absence of clouds. The night star can be admired until dawn around 7 a.m. The Moon will then be located 359,910 kilometers from our planet, that is to say slightly less close than during the last supermoon on August 31. But this difference will be imperceptible from Earth.
While the term “supermoon” from the United States has become widely used in recent decades, evoking the image of the fascinating spectacle of a Moon considerably larger than usual, it is in reality a fairly common phenomenon. Indeed, the Moon’s orbit around the Earth adopts an elliptical shape, which means that our natural satellite is not always at the same distance from our planet depending on whether it is located at the ends of the ellipse or between these.
Super Moon dates therefore correspond to times when the Moon is at the point in its orbit closest to Earth. However, scientists rarely use the term supermoon, which is a bit sensationalist for a regular and ultimately unspectacular event. Indeed, if that night our natural satellite appears slightly larger and brighter than the rest of the time, this difference in size is not perceptible to the naked eye. Without equipment, you should therefore observe a relatively classic full Moon, which does not prevent the phenomenon from being, as always, a superb spectacle.
