The supermoon of 2012 is over, but the joys of moongazing are not. Even though Saturday night's lunar showing was the biggest and brightest of the year, the views are nearly as good anytime around the full moon — tonight, for example.

Photographs of the supermoon sight streamed out over online channels, including Twitter feeds, Facebook updates, blog postings and slick slideshows (such as our own roundup). They also streamed into msnbc.com's FirstPerson in-box. I've put together a selection of 10 submissions here.

The kind of supermoon we saw last night isn't exactly a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. The phenomenon, also known as a perigee moon, can be seen whenever the full moon occurs while it's near the closest point of its elliptical orbit around Earth. Last night, the moon was just 221,802 miles away from Earth, or about 15,000 miles closer than average. The moon's angular size was 14 percent wider than it is at maximum distance, and it was 30 percent brighter than minimum moonshine.

If we define a supermoon as the biggest, brightest full moon of a given year, next year's supermoon will be almost as good as this year's, on June 23, 2013. The supermoon of 2014 will be brighter, and the 2016 supermoon will outdo last year's, which got the moongazing fad started. EarthSky News has the schedule for the next few years. Some rightly note that the moon is worth watching on every night of the year, and that the full moon isn't necessarily the best time to see all the detail the lunar disk can offer. But there's nothing wrong in having an annual holiday devoted to moongazing, is there?

The next big sky event is coming up on May 20, when the new moon blots out most of the sun to create an annular solar eclipse. A wide swath of the Asia-Pacific region and North America will see a partial eclipse, while folks situated along a narrow track of territory extending from China across to the Oregon-California coast and down to Texas can witness a "Ring of Fire," in which the moon's disk covers all but the thin rim of the sun's disk. That'll be an amazing thing to see, but make sure you use proper eye protection. You can get the details from my eclipse viewing guide, and learn more about the appeal of an annular eclipse.

There's an astronomical connection between this weekend's supermoon and this month's "Ring of Fire": Because the moon was nearly as close as it can come for the full-moon phase, it's nearly as far out as it can go for the new-moon phase. Thus, the moon's apparent size is significantly smaller than usual when it tries to covers up the sun — and that's why we have a ring of fire rather than the fully blacked-out sun of a total eclipse. For that, we'll have to wait until November. Stay tuned in the weeks and months ahead for more about all these astronomical phenomena, plus June's last-in-a-lifetime transit of Venus.

Submitted by Isaiah Blount / Smooth Images / UGC

Florida photographer Isaiah Blount of Smooth Images submitted this picture of an airplane crossing the disk of the supermoon on Saturday night.

Submitted by Penny Wainwright / UGC

The supermoon looms in the skies of Louisiana, outside Farmerville.

Submitted by Campbell McCubbin / UGC

Campbell McCubbin says this is the "first glimpse of the 'supermoon' from my deck overlooking Semiahmoo Bay, White Rock, B.C., Canada."

Submitted by Prashanti Pasupuleti / UGC

Prashanti Pasupuleti of New Delhi, India, says the supermoon is "within my reach."

Submitted by Angie Lucero / UGC

Wisps of clouds waft over the supermoon in this view from Albuquerque, N.M.

Submitted by Maria Johnson / UGC

Maria Johnson took this picture of the moon around 1 a.m. ET on Sunday in Sarasota, Fla.

Submitted by Larry Shiflett / UGC

The supermoon rises over a sailboat in the waters near Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Submitted by Bianca Fister / UGC

Spring flowers are silhouetted against the supermoon in this picture from Bianca Fister of Hilton, N.Y.

Submitted by Joe Leonard / UGC

The supermoon peeks over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in a picture from Joe Leonard of Taos, N.M..

Submitted by Justine Daniel / UGC

The supermoon is partly hidden by clouds in the skies above St. Augustine on the island of Trinidad.

More about the supermoon:

• Slideshow: Greatest hits from the supermoon
• How big is that supermoon anyway?
• Wonders of sun, moon and sky
• Five moon mysteries
• Five moon myths

Many thanks to all our FirstPerson photographers, including Lynn Schneider, John McNamara, Josh Warner and Mitzi Easley.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Robert Michael / AFP - Getty Images

A nearly full moon rises behind the cross of the Frauenkirche in the German city of Dresden in May 4.

Saturday night's "supermoon" is the biggest and brightest full moon of the year, due to the fact that the moon is near the closest point in its orbital path around Earth. But just how much bigger and brighter does it look? That's a tricky question.

Most reports say the moon looks 14 percent bigger than usual, which is close to the truth but isn't quite right. They also say it's 30 percent brighter than usual, which isn't right, either. James Garvin, chief scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, ran the numbers to come up with an explanation that seems to make the most sense.

First of all, it's important to note that the moon itself is not getting significantly bigger or smaller. There's a scientific debate over whether the moon is slowly shrinking or spreading out. But in either case, the change isn't noticeable on human time scales.

The difference in the moon's apparent size is basically a function of how close it is to Earth in its elliptical orbit. That orbit isn't changing on human time scales, either. It just so happens that tonight, the moon is coming closest to Earth at the same time that it's going full. Because the moon and the sun are precisely opposite each other, relative to Earth, tonight's ocean tides may be a bit higher than typical — but again, the effect is nowhere near big enough to worry about.

So how noticeable is the visual effect? Here what Garvin told me in an email today:

• "The biggest predictable effect on the brightness of the full moon is how close the moon is to Earth.  With everything else the same, a full moon is about 30 percent brighter when the moon is closest to Earth in its orbit (called perigee) compared to a full moon when the moon is farthest from Earth in its orbit (called apogee).  Today’s full moon is at perigee."
• "Also, when the moon is high in the sky (as it is now), we are closer to the moon by approximately the radius of Earth compared to when the moon is on the horizon. (Note: Earth’s radius is about 6,371 kilometers)."
• "Since the distance from the center of Earth to the center of the moon is on average about 384,403 kilometers, the radius of the earth is about 6,371 kilometers, and brightness changes as the square of the distance, being closer to the moon by about the radius of the earth increases the brightness of the full moon by about 3 percent."  
• "Thus the present supermoon is, at maximum, only about 9 to 10 percent larger in an angular (appearance) sense than a typical full moon and is also brighter (by a few percent), making it appear 'super.'"

"Meanwhile, our intrepid Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter continues its remarkable mapping of our nearest celestial neighbor, coming up (in June) on its three-year anniversary of being in lunar orbit with its amazing array of 7 instruments," Garvin added.  "As of now, the data returned from LRO (over 300 trillion bytes) is larger than all of the rest of the data acquired for planets in the solar system combined (except for Earth, of course)."

Which just goes to show that every day is a "super moon" day for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and its science team. Check out NASA's Web site for more wisdom from James Garvin.

Geoff Chester, an astronomer at the U.S. Naval Observatory, says the moon appears 14 percent larger in angular size when it's at the closest point in its orbit, compared with its appearance when it's farthest away from Earth. That's not 14 percent larger than average. That's 14 percent larger than the minimum apparent size.

"You'd be very hard-pressed to detect that with the unaided eye," Chester told The Associated Press. Seasoned skywatchers, however, say they can definitely tell the difference. Can you? Take a look at the moon tonight — before, during or after the moment of maximum fullness at 11:35 p.m. ET — and tell us what you see.

Update for 6:45 p.m. ET May 5: Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait observes that the moon's angular size is roughly equivalent to that of a dime as seen from 6 feet away. You can bet I'll have a dime taped onto a south-facing window tonight to make the observations. Also, tonight's supermoon will be a little less super than last year's supermoon, because the moon is about 240 miles farther away at peak fullness than it was in March 2011. For what it's worth, next year's supermoon will be imperceptibly smaller than this year's. I wonder if there'll be perceptibly less hype.

Update for 2:20 a.m. ET May 6: Yes, the weather was clear enough for supermoon-gazing in my Seattle-area neighborhood — and yes, I really did tape a dime onto a window to compare its angular size with the moon's. But it seemed to me that the sizes were about the same at a dime distance of 4 or 5 feet, rather than the 6-foot distance that Phil Plait suggested. Which just goes to show you: YMMV (your moon may vary). You can see what I saw by checking my Twitpic gallery.

More about the supermoon:

• How to see the supermoon — and meteors, too
• How to plan your supermoon snapshot
• Supermoon rises over Greek temple
• Five moon mysteries
• Five moon myths

If you snap a great photo of the moon, feel free to upload it into msnbc.com's FirstPerson in-box.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Monika Landy-Gyebnar

Monika Landy-Gyebnar took this picture of the rising sun on May 1 from Veszprem, Hungary. "The image I saw when the sun appeared was incredible!" she said in a posting to SpaceWeather.com. "This was the strongest mirage effect on the sun I have ever seen!" In this image, the mirage makes the sunspot region known as AR 1471 look like three dots in a row, toward the lower left area of the sun's disk.

The next month promises to be filled with astronomical wonders, including this weekend's "supermoon," an annular solar eclipse later this month, and a last-in-a-lifetime transit of Venus. Here are a few images to get you in the mood for those cosmic glories.

Hungarian photographer Monika Landy-Gyebnar snapped an unusual picture of a solar mirage on May 1, showing the sun's distorted disk at the eastern horizon. She told SpaceWeather.com that she expected to see the mirage, because she lives in an area where morning fog usually collects in the valley, "so it is a location colder than its surroundings." The temperature difference often creates a shimmering mirage effect, but Landy-Gyebnar was amazed by the strength of the effect on that particular morning.

"The distortion reached the region where the big sunspot 1471 is located as a visible dark dot," she wrote. "I saw the sunspot disappearing and appearing again, then its mirage appeared above the original spot higher on the solar disk, then a third mirage spot appeared. ... I was shivering with beauty!"

For details, check out Landy-Gyebnar's gallery at SpaceWeather.com and her video clip on YouTube.

The picture above served as today's "Where in the Cosmos" picture puzzle on the Cosmic Log Facebook page, and Brittany Pedersen was the first to figure out that the photo showed a sunspot mirage. To reward her sharp vision, I'm sending her a pair of solar viewing glasses from Astronomers Without Borders. Stay tuned for the next "Where in the Cosmos" quiz on Facebook in a week, and you might win some solar spectacles as well.

Landy-Gyebnar's photographs, and the glasses, serve as good reminders that skywatchers should never gaze at the shining sun without proper eye protection, even during the annular solar eclipse coming up on May 20. To get ready for that rare event, check out my two-part series and "Virtually Speaking" podcast.

Another big sky event is coming up this weekend, when the moon turns full during its closest approach to Earth. That means the moon will be 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than the norm — leading many to call the sight a "supermoon." So much has been made of Saturday night's full moon that Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait is counseling rhetorical restraint (with an artistic assist from Sci-ence's Maki Naro). But even Phil says it's worth going out and looking at the moon, on Saturday night or on any night. "It's bright and silvery and lovely and you can see features with your naked eye and with a telescope you'll see tons more," he writes.

If you have a great supermoon picture to share, please pass it along via msnbc.com's FirstPerson "Sky Highlights" upload page. We'll put together a gallery of our favorite moon views over the weekend.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been looking at the moon lately, in preparation for the transit of Venus on June 5. That's when the planet Venus makes a stately march across the disk of the sun over the course of six hours. The last time Venus did that was eight years ago, and it won't happen again until the year 2117. So the scientists behind Hubble, like many other astronomers, want to take a look.

As explained in today's image advisory, the sun is too bright for Hubble to observe directly. Instead, Hubble's scientists will check the light rays that are reflected by the moon and see whether they can discern the faint signature of the light that passed through Venus' atmosphere.

"Imprinted on that small amount of light are the fingerprints of the planet's atmospheric makeup," the Hubble team said in its advisory. "These observations will mimic a technique that is already being used to sample the atmospheres of giant planets outside our solar system passing in front of their stars. In the case of the Venus transit observations, astronomers already know the chemical makeup of Venus's atmosphere, and that it does not show signs of life on the planet. But the Venus transit will be used to test whether this technique will have a chance of detecting the very faint fingerprints of an Earthlike planet, even one that might be habitable for life, outside our solar system that similarly transits its own star."

Hubble will observe the moon for seven hours on the day of the transit to get a good sampling of spectroscopic data. Here's a practice image of the impact crater Tycho, acquired on Jan. 11: 

D. Ehrenreich / IPAG / CNRS / UJF / NASA / ESA

This mottled landscape showing the impact crater Tycho is among the most violent-looking places on our Moon. Astronomers didn't aim NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to study Tycho, however. The image was taken in January as part of the preparation for observing the transit of Venus across the sun's face on June 5.

Finally, here are a couple of videos to end the week with: On one end of the time spectrum, there's an hourlong recap of this week's Space Hangout, in which several space scribes (including yours truly) review the far-out news of the week. On the other end, there's a six-minute mashup of cosmic images from NASA, titled "Pursuit of Light." The montage starts out with Earth imagery, then moves on to shots of the moon, the sun, Mars, Jupiter and its moons, the Saturnian system and asteroids. Then you'll see nebulas, the remnants of supernova blasts, and interacting galaxies. How much farther out can you get?

More far-out imagery:

• NASA probe captures close-ups of Saturnian moons
• Earth's beauty dazzles in astronaut video from space
• Slideshow: Month in Space Pictures for April 2012

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.