On June 23, 2013 at 11:32 UTC the full moon was not only the closest and largest full moon of the year, it will also be the moon’s closest encounter with Earth for all of 2013. It will not be this close again until August 10, 2014.

Astronomers call this sort of close full moon a perigee full moon. The word perigee describes the moon’s closest point to Earth for a given month.

However, the word supermoon didn’t come from astronomy. Instead, it came from astrology. Astrologer Richard Nolle of the website astropro.com takes credit for coining the term supermoon. There are three full moons in 2013 that meet the definition of a supermoon – May, June and July. But the June 22-23 full moon is the most super of them all 🙂

Below you will find the days the moon is closest to Earth from 2011-2016:

2011: March 19 – 356,575 km
2012: May 6 – 356,955 km
2013: June 23 – 356,991 km
2014: August 10 -356,896 km
2015: September 28 – 356,877 km
2016: November 14 – 356,509 km

In the gallery below you will find some beautiful images of this year’s Supermoon. For more, there’s a Supermoon 2013 Flickr group created by NASA that has hundreds more for your enjoyment. A quick search for ‘2013 Supermoon’ will also yield some fantastic results!

[Source: EarthSky.org]