Thedog days of summerare gearing up to be an specially exciting time in the nighttime sky : two super Sun Myung Moon will illume up the heavens in August 2023 . Backyardastronomerswill be able-bodied to catch the full sturgeonmoonat the rootage of the month , while an strange gamy crack moonlight will rise 30 days after . They ’ll be the second and third of this year ’s four super moons on the astrological calendar . Here ’s what you need to know .
When Are August’s Full Moons?
AsThe Old Farmer ’s Almanacreports , August ’s first full moonlight will reach its crown at 2:32 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday , August 1 . If that ’s daytime where you subsist , you ’ll have to wait for the sun to put that dark . You should be able-bodied to see it on the night of July 31 as well .
The super puritanical moonshine will top out on August 30 at 9:36 p.m. EST — and no , it wo n’t actually appear blue . The termblue moondescribes thesecond full moonto seem in a calendar month , which occursonce every two to three years .
What is a Super Moon?
A super Sun Myung Moon happens when the moon reaches perigee , the point in its orbit when it ’s closest toEarth , at the same time the synodic month is in its full phase . At perigee , our moonlight is an intermediate distance of 226,000 miles from Earth . ( The moonshine ’s utmost point , calledapogee , is roughly 253,000 miles away from Earth . ) As a upshot of its law of proximity , the moon appears especially brilliant and about7 percent largerthan a normal full synodic month . compare to a full moon at apogee ( a.k.a . amicromoon ) , it looks 14 percentage big .
Why Is It Called a Sturgeon Moon?
Each month ’s full lunar month has anickname(or multiple nicknames ) , usually of kinfolk origin , that coincides with certain plant , animal , or weather activeness vulgar at that sentence of class . Since people catch an abundance of sturgeon — a large freshwaterfishthat ’s been around since the Mesozoic era — in theGreat Lakesand Lake Champlain during this part of summer , they started calling August ’s full lunar month thesturgeon moon . It has a few lesser - know monikers , too , including the Cree “ vanish up moon ” ( a nod to young birds fledging from their nest ) , and the “ rice synodic month , ” an Anishinaabe nickname marking the angry rice harvest .
A variation of this story run in 2020 ; it has been updated for 2023 .
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