The biggest and brightest moon of the year is on its way to light up Aotearoa's skies this Thursday.
Dubbed a 'blue supermoon', the spectacle will appear much closer to Earth than the average moon.
The term blue moon has nothing to do with its colour but rather means it is the second full moon to appear in a single calendar month following one on August 1.
While a blue moon occurs once every two to three years, one that coincides with a supermoon is a rarer phenomena. Typically, there will only be two to three full moons that qualify as a supermoon each year.
"Supermoons look about 8 percent bigger and about 16 percent brighter than an average full moon," Stardome astronomer Rob Davison said.
The end-of-August supermoon will be over 27,000 kilometres closer to Earth than its average distance of 384,000 kilometres.
"The super blue moon will rise towards the east as the Sun sets towards the west, and will be visible in the sky for the whole night. If it's a clear night, people will be able to see it from all over the country," Davison said.
The moon will be at its most full at 1:35pm on Thursday, which means it will be easiest to see it looking full and super in the early morning (around 5am) or early evening on Thursday. However it will be visible almost the whole night either side, so there will be good viewing Wednesday-Thursday night and Thursday-Friday morning.
According to MetService, Thursday's weather will be mainly fine bringing promising viewing conditions. However, there will be showers in the North, mainly in Bay of Plenty and about Kāpiti and down south rain is expected in Fiordland and southern Westland.
The last blue supermoon occurred in 2009, and the next won't be for another decade.
