Supermoon. A full moon at perigee. 14% bigger, 30% brighter than usual. An eclipse during a supermoon is rare. There have been just five supermoon eclipses since 1900 (in 1910, 1928, 1946, 1964 and 1982).
10 Lunar Facts
From the moon, the earth always appears in the same place in the sky.
During a lunar eclipse, the temperature on parts of the moon shaded by the earth’s shadow can drop 300 Celsius degrees in 90 minutes.
There are four kinds of lunar months: anomalistic (perigee to perigee), nodical (referenced to earth's orbit), sidereal (referenced to the stars), and synodical (referenced to the sun).
The sun is 398,110 times as bright as the full moon.
The first quarter moon is brighter than the last quarter because the moon's surface is not uniform.
Only 59% of the moon is ever visible from earth.
The moon is half as bright as a full moon 2.4 days before and after the full moon, when it is 95% illuminated.
A lunar eclipse on earth is seen as a solar eclipse on the moon.
The International Astronomical Union decides the names for craters and mountains. They are usually named after dead scientists, scholars and explorers.
Lunar time is measured in lunours.
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