Black supermoon set for Wednesday night

Wednesday’s New Moon is being called a black supermoon.

Let's break down all those adjectives.

A New Moon is when sunlight directly hits only the far side of the moon, leaving side always facing Earth (thanks to tidal locking) somewhat in the dark, but not completely.

A black moon is the second new moon of the calendar month (the first was on July 2). You can think of it as the opposite of a blue moon.

This moon is “black” only here in the Americas, where it falls on the night of July 31. In Europe and points eastward, it falls early in the morning of Aug. 1, so they will have their black moon on Aug. 30, but it won’t be super.

The moon reaches new phase on July 31 at 11:13 p.m. EDT.

It reaches perigee on Aug. 2 at 3:10 a.m. EDT at a distance of 223,319 miles from Earth. Fifteen days later, the moon reach apogee, 29,109 miles further from Earth. But aren't supermoons big and bright and full? Not if you ask the man who invented the term.

A supermoon, as defined by Richard Nolle when he coined the term in the 1970s, is a full or new moon that occurs near perigee, the point in the moon’s orbit when it is closest to Earth.

For Nolle, it was less about the appearance of the moon and more about its position in relation to the sun and Earth. There are very real gravitational and tidal effects created as the sun, moon and Earth line up, tugging just a bit more on the Earth and its oceans.

None of this is very scientific. black moons are a calendrical coincidence found in the Old Farmers Almanac and the supermoon concept was created for an astrology magazine, this week's black supermoon does bring an opportunity to experience Earthshine later this week.

While bright, day part of the moon is being lit directly by sunlight, Earthshine is light reflected off the Earth’s surface. That's a long way for light to travel but the Earth is five times more reflective than the Moon.

On Wednesday, the moon will be lost in the sun’s glare but after sunset through the rest of the week, look for Earthshine.

Nestled in the sliver lit directly by the sun, the rest of the moon's disk will be softly lit by light bounced off clouds, land and ocean thousands of miles to our west. This is more poetically known as "the new moon in the arms of the old moon's arms."

The same process, more generically called planetshine, works the same way throughout the solar system. The Cassini probe used light reflected off Saturn's cloud tops to capture images its moons and rings.

You might even catch a meteor while out moongazing.

Three meteor showers are active this week, two peaked on Monday. The alpha Capricornids come from the direction of the constellation Capricorn in the east, to the right of the setting Sun.

The Southern delta Aquariids come from Aquarius a bit more eastward rising an hour or so after sunset.

Don't expect more than a few stray meteors from this minor shower.

The Perseids are also active ahead of a peak on the night of Aug. 12. Unfortunately, that coincides with a full moon, spoiling the view of this normally more active shower.