If you haven’t heard, tomorrow (June 23) will bring the closest full Moon of the year, which will make it appear big and bright in the night sky — a so-called “Supermoon.” But what does this really mean and how does it happen? Dr. Michelle Thaller of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center explains:

While a lot of media outlets have been making a big deal out of the Supermoon, it’s really quite a natural and cyclical event…

and in all honesty, you probably won’t even notice the difference between it and a “regular” full Moon. In fact, last month’s full Moon was very nearly “super” too, being only about 1% farther away on the 25th than it will be tomorrow on the 23rd (and it didn’t make any headlines.)

“Even if you compared last month’s full Moon with this month’s “Supermoon” side-by-side you’d hardly notice it; you’d never notice the difference just by going out one month to look, waiting a month, and looking again,” writes Phil Plait on his Bad Astronomy site. “Also, the Moon is a lot smaller in the sky than you think, so a small change is even harder to spot.”

So if you want to join in the hype, that’s fine — just remember that’s all it is: hype. (In fact the whole idea of a “Supermoon” really didn’t exist until 2011.) But that shouldn’t stop you from going out to look up at the Moon, tomorrow or any other night… it’s still a beautiful companion world to our planet and a great reminder of our constantly-moving place in space!

Want to find out how far away the full Moon will be and when? Click here. And for a really detailed post about Moons and Supermoons, read fellow Universe Today writer Dave Dickinson’s article here.

(Oh, and don’t fall for pictures like these. They’re going to undoubtedly pop up on teh interwebz…again.)