Welcome to our World Supermoon

   With all of the hype surrounding the new movie adaption of Superman, 

I could not resist the allusion...

It's a bird, it's a plane, no, it's Supermoon! 

This Sunday, June 23, marks the occasion of this year's Supermoon. 

For you science geeks (I am one), this is the technical definition of what you are likely to see:

Also known as a perigee full moon, the Supermoon event occurs when a full moon lines up with the Earth and the sun at a specific point in its orbit, called the lunar perigee. That's the point at which the moon is nearest to Earth as it traces its elliptical path around our planet. 

The best viewing time for this year's Supermoon should be Sunday evening, June 23, 2013, shortly after dusk.

There. Doesn't that make you feel better? So now you know.

The moon has always entranced, intrigued and beguiled.

When we are children we sing songs about this glimmering orb that fills our sky with wonder.

There are the tender lullabies

I see the moon and the moon sees me

The moon sees somebody I long to see.

So, God bless the moon and God bless me.

And God bless the 'somebody I long to see.

And the silly nursery rhymes

Hey diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle

The cow jumped over the moon

The little dog laughed to see such sport

And the dish ran away with the spoon

And who could forget the words 

of the beloved children's storybook Goodnight Moon?

In the great green room 

there was a telephone

and a red balloon 

and a picture of

the cow jumping over the moon...

Goodnight room

Goodnight light and the red balloon

Goodnight cow jumping over the moon 

Goodnight room

Goodnight air

Goodnight voices everywhere...

And then there are these beautiful words from the British poet Percy Bysshe Shelley,

Heaven's ebon vault, 

studded with stars unutterably bright, 

through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, 

seems like a canopy which love has spread to curtain her sleeping world.

Step outside to see the show. Here she comes in all of her glory.

That glimmering orb that so entrances us is drawing close once again.

The heavens declare the Glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of His hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech
night after night they reveal knowledge,
They have no speech, they use no words
no sound is heard from them
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth
their words to the ends of the world
                      Psalm 19: 1-4

What celestial song does the moon sing?

What angelic music does she employ as she utters her praise?

What wonder, what beauty, what symmetry, what mystery 

she brings as gifts to the nighttime sky.

She is the Earth's fine evening song, 

not just for mankind,

but for all creatures everywhere.