People around the world will witness the first pink moon of the year on Monday. The ‘pink moon’, which is also one of the first supermoons of the year 2021 is set to appear late on Monday night, according to National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa). The moon will be visible opposite to the Sun in Earth-based longitude at 11.32pm EDT.
“This will be the next day from the Atlantic Daylight Savings timezone eastward across Africa, Europe, Asia, and Australia to the International Date Line,” the space agency said. Since most of the commercial calendars use Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) or Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), people living in these time zones will see this moon on Tuesday.
What is a supermoon?
Astrologer Richard Nolle coined the term ‘supermoon’ in 1979 and is used to refer to either a new or full moon that is closest to the Earth or occurs when the moon is within 90% of its perigee. These full moons are the biggest and brightest full moons for the year.
The next supermoon is scheduled to appear a month later on May 26 and will be slightly closer to the earth than the one that will be visible tonight. The supermoon of May will be closer by about 98 miles or 157 kilometers or about 0.04 per cent of the distance from the Earth to the Moon at perigee.
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What is a pink moon?
The full moon in April is named after herb moss pink, also called creeping phlox, moss phlox, or mountain phlox one of the earliest spring flowers appearing in the United States.
There are many other names for this moon such as Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, the Paschal moon, and the Fish Moon. For Hindus, this is Hanuman Jayanti celebrated in most areas on the full Moon day of the Hindu lunar month of Chaitra, which is Tuesday, April 27, 2021, Nasa said.
One can very easily capture the supermoon through a smartphone too by being at the right spot, adjusting the exposure to the right level, enabling the HDR feature, and avoiding the flash of the camera.