Super pink moon lights up Las Vegas sky — PHOTOS

Las Vegas Review-Journal

5 years ago

A pink supermoon rises over the Las Vegas Strip on Tuesday, April 7, 2020. (Benjamin Hager/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @benjaminhphoto

A nearly full moon rises behind a top of the flagpole on the State Flag Square in Minsk, Belarus, Tuesday, April 7, 2020. The phenomenon of "supermoon” happens when the moon is at its closest point to the earth and looks larger than usual. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

A view of the ‘super pink moon’, in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, Tuesday, April 7, 2020. (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo)

The supermoon rise behind an illuminated cross from a Christian Orthodox church in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, April 7, 2020. The phenomenon of “supermoon” happens when the moon is at its closest point to the earth and looks larger than usual. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

The supermoon rises in the sky in front of a fountain a Lake Eola Tuesday, April 7, 2020, in (Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

In this Monday, April 6, 2020, photo, a woman wearing a mask against the coronavirus looks up near the full moon in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei province (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

An airplane flys past a supermoon as it rises in the sky Tuesday, April 7, 2020, in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

Social distancing?

Tuesday night’s moon had none of that as the largest full moon of 2020 lighted up the Las Vegas Valley sky.

The supermoon, also called a pink moon, was closer to the Earth on Tuesday night than it will be at any other time this year.

On average 17,000 miles closer to the Earth than it normally is, the super pink moon would also be 30 percent brighter, NASA astronomer Michelle Thaller told space.com.

“The wonderful thing about a full moon is that full moons are up all night long, they rise at sunset then they cross over the sky and set at sunrise, so at any point in the night you can go outside and actually see this wonderful big, bright moon,” Thaller said.