A pink supermoon dazzled Australian skies last night as it reached the closest point of its orbit to earth.

ANU cosmologist and astrophysicist Dr Brad Tucker said, “the moon’s orbit varies by about 50,000 kilometres so last night, peaking around 1:20am Eastern Time but really throughout the night the moon was about 40,000 kilometres closer than on average.”

Mr Tucker said the supermoon is called “pink” because there is a different name for the moon in every month in the United States.

“The Harvest Moon in October for instance. So, it’s pink, it’s spring in the US, the Northern Hemisphere so the pink flowers are coming out and algae so that’s kind of the term even though it doesn’t look pink”.

Mr Tucker told Sky News next month there will be a “blood moon” when a supermoon takes place during a total lunar eclipse.

“So next month’s one will be even more special because yes it actually will be red for quite a few hours”.

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