Summer’s brightest supermoon coming this Sunday

This weekend will come as a treat for sky watchers as the biggest supermoon of the year will appear in the sky on Sunday.

This August supermoon is exceptional as the supermoon will become full during the same hour that the moon comes closest to the Earth (lunar perigee). It will outshine other full moons that have fallen on the same day as the lunar perigee.

Though the full moon begins on Sunday (10th August) at 2:09 p.m. ET, it will still look bright and big even on Saturday night. According to NASA in comparison to other full moons, this time the moon will be appeared 30% percent brighter and 15 % bigger. It will not come so close to Earth again until September 2015. The scientific name for the event on Sunday is a ‘perigee full moon’.

This year’s supermoon will be accompanied nicely by Perseid meteor shower which will produce ‘fireballs as bright as Jupiter or Venus’.

The Perseid may treat the skywatchers with 100 shooting stars per hour. This extraordinarily beautiful event will reach to its peak between 10th August and 13th August.

However, astronomers warned the meteor shower will be difficult to watch because the sky will be flooded with the lunar glare from the supermoon , according to International Meteor Organization.

“Lunar glare wipes out the black-velvety backdrop required to see faint meteors, and sharply reduces counts”, said Dr Bill Cooke from the American space agency Nasa’s Meteoroid Environment Office.

Supermoons occur relatively often, on average every 13 months and 18 days. This summer was an exception because full supermoon was also seen on July 12 another is due to appear on September 9.

This year was an exceptional one for supermoons, with three appearing in a row –one each in July, August and September. The next supermoon will fall on September 9, 2014.