A supermoon will be in our skies tonight

Millions of stargazers around the world have captured the year’s first celestial phenomenon - the supermoon - in stunning detail.

But one savvy stargazer caught a creepy coincidence; a “green energy” was captured bouncing off the moon in the United States.

Closer to home, Australia’s east coast got their first taste of the supermoon just after the moon rose at around 7pm, while the rest of the country were forced to wait until 1am AEST on Monday morning, considered the best time to view the supermoon.

Scientists highlighted the Tycho crater, featured in the photo below, as a key spectacle stargazers could spot. The Tycho spot with its system of rays was caused by an asteroid impact millions of years ago. Unlike a solar eclipse, you are perfectly fine to look at a supermoon with your own eyes.

The full moon is called a supermoon due to it appearing between 12 and 14 per cent larger and shining around 25-30 times brighter than normal. This is due to the moon positioning itself slightly closer to Earth than normal.

The most important thing for astronomers though will be the distance between the moon and earth, which will be just 360,000km. When the moon gets this close, it has a strong effect on the Earth’s ocean tides, in this case creating larger tides than usual.

A supermoon occurs when two space events line-up at once. The first is when a full moon happens, while the other is called a perigee. A perigee is what astronomers call the moment a celestial body, whether it be a moon, planet or a comet, reaches its closest point to earth.

While the moon reaches its perigee once every 27 days, it rarely occurs during a full moon, which is why a supermoon is quite rare.

According to Space.com, we only see around three to four supermoons a year, with all of them appearing different sizes and with varying brightness. The one we will see this weekend will be a fairly average size, however the next one is only a month away on September 29.

It will be the biggest of year. /Agencies