Deer supermoon, here’s how and when to see it

It’s the first one supermoon of the year the one that arrives in the sky on Monday 3 July. It is the first of four that 2023 will stage. This is that of the deer. The name comes from the Native American tradition because the new deer antlers usually appear in July. The other name is Full Moon of Thunderstorms, due to their frequency in this period.

The Moon will be full at 1.41 pm: about 36 hours before its passage to perigee, or at its minimum distance from the Earth, at 360,149 km from us, against an average distance of just over 384,000 km. It will be a little closer, brighter and a little bigger than usual.

Both the Full Moon and the New Moon are considered Supermoons, provided that they occur with our satellite close to the minimum distance from the Earth. The Moon describes a markedly elliptical orbit around our planet, therefore its distance from us is not constant, but varies between a minimum value (perigee) and a maximum value (apogee). The only observable supermoon is the full one, unless a solar eclipse occurs on a new supermoon.

«The next Super Moon will appear about 5% larger and a little brighter than average, but only an expert observer could perhaps realize this», explains Gianluca Masi, astrophysicist, scientific director of the Virtual Telescope Project. «These are far from striking variations, which nevertheless add charm to the event, a precious opportunity to admire our natural satellite in the context of the night sky, an increasingly neglected and forgotten landscape».

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The spectacle of the Full Moon is maximum at its rising, or at sunset, or at sunset of our satellite, or at dawn. The Full Moon shines in the sky opposite the Sun. «During twilight, the residual sunlight allows you to admire the landscape while the full Moon rises or falls on the horizon. At its rising or setting, the Moon is projected behind buildings and elements of the landscape, generating the sensation that its disc is larger, but it is only an optical illusion, precisely due to the presence in the field of vision of terms of comparison, drawn from the ‘environment”.

This first Supermoon of 2023 will be the southernmost Full Moon of the year, that is, the one that will rise the least on the Italian horizon. From Rome it will be seen reaching a maximum height of only 20 degrees on the night between 3 and 4 July, among the stars of the constellation Sagittarius.

For those who cannot see it live there is the live web of Virtual Telescope from 11pm on 3 July.