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A 'Full Snow Supermoon' will arrive Monday evening, Tuesday morning

By: Stacey Donaldson

Posted at 8:10 AM, Feb 18, 2019

and last updated 2019-02-18 10:10:11-05

The full moon of February, known as the "Full Snow Moon," will appear slightly bigger than usual in the night sky because of the moon's close proximity to Earth in its orbit. It is considered a supermoon. Check it out Monday night and Tuesday morning!

Here’s how the full moon works

The moon travels around Earth once every 27.3 days. It also takes about 27 days for the moon to rotate on its axis. The moon always shows us the same face — there is no single "dark side" of the moon. As the moon revolves around Earth, it is illuminated from varying angles by the sun. What we see when we look at the moon is reflected sunlight. On average, the moon rises about 50 minutes later each day, which means sometimes it rises during daylight and other times during nighttime hours.

The moon is a bit more than one-fourth (27 percent) the size of Earth, a much smaller ratio (1:4) than any other planets and their moons.

Earth's moon is the fifth largest moon in the solar system.

The moon's mean radius is 1,079.6 miles (1,737.5 kilometers). Double those figures to get its diameter: 2,159.2 miles (3,475 km), which is less than a third the width of Earth. The moon's equatorial circumference is 6,783.5 miles (10,917 km).

To put that in perspective, NASA said if Earth were the size of a nickel, the moon would be about as big as a coffee bean.

Full moon times (MT) this year: