Astronomers say Monday's full moon will make its closest pass to the earth, making its disc appear larger than since January 1948, but the subtle difference in its size will not be easy to discern with just human eyes.
However, on Tuesday evening, a bright star named Aldebaran, or Rohini, will appear to vanish behind the lunar disc at 8.58pm and reappear at 10pm, a phenomenon that astronomers call a lunar occultation of a star.
"Monday's full moon is being called a supermoon, but it is primarily a matter of mathematical record, people will find it difficult to make out the difference between this full moon and the next one in December," said Nandivada Rathnasree, the director of the Nehru Planetarium, New Delhi. "But everyone will be able to appreciate Tuesday's bright star going behind the moon and turning up again," she said.
The full moon on Monday and the lunar occultation on Tuesday should be visible across the country, but astronomers caution that clouds and haze, if present, could influence visibility.
Such lunar occultation of stars are frequent, occurring almost every day, Rathnasree said, but most such stars are too faint for people to notice, while occultation of bright stars are less frequent. "But occultation’s are also interesting from an astronomical point of view because they can help us generate new data to understand the fine surface features at the edge of the lunar disc," she said.
The best time to observe the full moon would be about two hours after moonrise, astronomers say. A website with astronomical information suggests that Monday's moonrise will occur at 4.58pm in Calcutta, 5.08pm in Patna and 5.37pm in Delhi.
A US science historian and director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison astronomy outpost has cautioned that to the casual observer, the full moon on Monday won't look too different from any other full moon. "I encourage people to go out and take a look, it's always good when people take an interest in astronomical objects, but I wouldn't wake up the kids at 3am," Jim Lattice said in a media release from the University.