It's a bird! It's a plane! It's the supermoon...again!

What's a supermoon?

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It's become a bit of a buzzword in recent years, but a supermoon does actually look different than a "normal" full moon. In fact, it appears 30% brighter and 14% larger.

When the moon orbits Earth, it doesn't do so in a full circle. It's more of an elliptically-shaped orbit. That means there will be a far point and a close point in its orbit around our planet.

The far point is called apogee . The close point is called perigee . When a full moon is at perigee, it is called a supermoon.

Why is the November moon supposed to be even brighter?

I wrote to Tony Rice, an Ambassador to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a frequent space writer on WRAL.com .

He tells me, "The distance

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