Lucky stargazers across the UK caught a glimpse of the spectacular supermoon on Wednesday night that lit up the night sky.
The full moon in July is also known as the Buck Moon because male deer shed and regrow their antlers around this time of year.
A supermoon is the result of a full moon occurring when it is near its closest point to the Earth in its orbit, and clear skies meant plenty of people saw the impressive spectacle.
The Buck Moon will be the biggest and brightest supermoon of the year as it represents the moon arriving at its closest point to the Earth for 2022.
This can happen because the moon orbits the Earth on an elliptical path, rather than a circular one.
Stunning photographs have captured the Buck Moon at various locations across the UK and other parts of the world.
The moon's name came from a Native American system which uses the different months’ full moons as a calendar to keep track of the seasons, said Anna Ross, a planetarium astronomer at Royal Museums Greenwich, in south-east London.
“The best time to view this supermoon will be any time during the night of the 13th July, when the moon will rise in the east just after sunset, and set in the west a little before sunrise," she said.
“There is no particular location you need to be to observe this event as this is a bright full moon. As long as the night is clear of clouds it will be easy to spot whether you are in a light-polluted city or a dark area of countryside.”
A supermoon means that the moon is a little closer to us here on Earth so will slightly bigger in the sky.
“The apparent difference between the size of the full moon at its closest and farthest points is only around 14 per cent and, although if you were on the moon its brightness wouldn’t change, being that bit closer, it also overall appears to be around 30 per cent brighter to us here on Earth," she added.
“The average distance of the moon from the Earth is 384,400km, but the Moon will reach its closest point this lunar month on the 13th July at 09:08, when it will be 357,264 km away.
"The exact moment of the full moon closest to this point is also on the 13th July, but at 19:37. This supermoon can be referred to as a Super Buck Moon.”
There is no formal limit to how close the full moon needs to be to the Earth to count as a supermoon.
On Wednesday night, the moonrise time from London was at 9.48pm, 10.35pm in Edinburgh and 9.24pm in Plymouth, according to The Royal Astronomical Society’s deputy executive director Dr Robert Massey.
It will still be available to see over the course of the following two days, but it will diminish over time.
The term supermoon, coined in 1979 is when the moon is closest to the Earth on its elliptical orbit - and as it on an elliptical (oval) orbit, it only comes this close to the Earth on rare occasions, what is known as the perigee.
