Loft your eyes toward the skies on Sunday, Dec 3. The only supermoon of 2017 will be appearing over your head.

"Supermoon" has become the widely popular term for what an astronomer would call the perigean full moon. That is, when the moon gets full right around the time of its perigee, the closest it gets to Earth.

The moon's orbit varies a lot. On average, our natural satellite is 238,000 miles from here. But it can be as far as about 252,000 miles away and as close as 221,000 miles or so. When the moon is full at that short distance, the resulting supermoon can appear about 14 percent larger in the sky, and can be about 30 percent brighter.

The official stats from Space.com:

The moon becomes totally full at 10:47 a.m. EST (1547 GMT) on Sunday (Dec. 3). It will officially reach perigee the next day (Dec. 4) at 3:45 a.m. EST (0845 GMT), when it is 222,135 miles (357,492 kilometers) away from Earth.



This weekend's event won't be quite as spectacular as the much-ballyhooed supermoon of November 2016, which was the largest since 1948. But it'll see be a sight to see. Happy viewing!

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