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>>Interviewer: The full moon on August 10th isn't like other full moons we've seen this year.

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This is a "supermoon," and here to tell us more about it

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is NASA scientist Dr. Michelle Thaller. Thank you for joining us, Michelle.

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>>MIchelle: Hey, great to be here, thank you. >>Interviewer: So tell us, what is a supermoon,

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and what makes this full moon special? >>Michelle: Well a supermoon simply

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defined is the largest and brightest moon of the year, and that's what's going to be happening this Sunday.

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Now, the reason this happens at all is as the Moon orbits around the

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Earth, it doesn't orbit in a perfect circle. Sometimes it's a little farther away, that we call

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the "apogee." And other times, it swings in a little bit closer to Earth,

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and we call that the "perigee." And if you get a full moon near perigee, that means

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the Moon looks bigger and brighter. And here's a comparison of

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a small full moon for the year, and the one we're having on Sunday is about 14%

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bigger, which amazingly makes it 30% brighter, a third brighter,

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so you will see a lovely, large, bright full moon rising on Sunday.

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>>Interviewer: When is the best time to view the supermoon, is it

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going to look different from other full moons? >>Michelle: Well because it's

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closer, in fact it's 31,000 miles closer, it is going to appear larger

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and brighter. But the nice thing about the Moon is you can see it anywhere that you happen to have a

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clear sky during the night. So I usually like to go out around sunset, because

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that's when the full moon rises. And look at the eastern horizon, and watch the Moon come up

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and whenever you see the Moon close to the horizon, it looks even larger than normal,

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it looks even more spectacular. But the Moon will be up all weekend long,

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you know whether it's Friday evening, all the way through to Sunday, go outside and look at the Moon,

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and appreciate the brightest, most spectacular full moon of the year.

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>>Interviewer: Well NASA has had a spacecraft orbiting the Moon for five years,

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called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. What are some of the cool things

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we've learned from this mission? >>Michelle: Well that's right, when you look at the Moon this weekend,

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picture this spacecraft actually orbiting around it right now. And that's LRO, the

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Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. And LRO is actually making the Moon the most

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well-studied object in the solar system. The temperature for example, we're finding the

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coldest temperature in the solar system. We see craters. Here's a

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beautiful mountain that's actually inside a large crater called "Tycho," and it sorta looks like

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there's a little rock on top of that mountain. But that little boulder that you see

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is lit up by the Sun. The scale is very misleading. That is actually the size of a large

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football stadium. So there are dramatic terrains on the Moon that we still

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have to study. And of course the wonderful thing about the Moon is it's a pristine

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sample of the formation of the solar system. Billions of years ago,

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many smaller objects collided together to form the Moon. And we

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see a record of the cratering that's been left unchanged for billions of years.

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Here you see an animation, it first started with some very large bodies

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coming together, very big craters are formed. Over time,

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it was smaller objects that left records on the Moon. We still see the occasional crater forming,

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even today, and while most of those craters have been erased on the surface of the Earth,

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because of our atmosphere, oceans, weather, all those things,

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on the Moon we actually have a sample of what formed the solar system billions

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of years ago. >>Interviewer: It's been 45 years

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since NASA put a man on the Moon. What have we learned about our closest neighbor

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since then? >>Michelle: It's wonderful that we can actually use LRO

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to even look back at the Moon and think about the history that NASA has there. It's been 45

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years since people landed on the Moon. And I love to think that, you know,

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hey we used to have a car that was actually driving around on the surface of another world.

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And you can still see the landing sites using LRO. Those little dark

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tracks that you see through the lunar soil, those are the footprints of the astronauts.

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We can see the actual descent stages, we can actually see the lunar modules

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down there. And as a matter of fact, we know that the American flags are still flying

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on the Moon 45 years later. >>Interviewer: Sounds great,

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where can we go to learn more? >>Michelle: Well to learn more about all of our

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studies using LRO, the history of the Moon, go to NASA.gov/LRO.

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And you can see some of the beautiful images that

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we're returning, and I really encourage you to go there and learn everything you can

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about the Moon. >>Interviewer: Thank you very much for joining us Michelle. >>Michelle: Great to

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be here. Thank you.