CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. \u2014 The cosmos is offering up a double feature in August: a pair of supermoons culminating in a rare blue moon.<\/p>\n
Catch the first show Tuesday evening as the full moon rises in the southeast, appearing slightly brighter and bigger than normal. That\u2019s because it will be closer than usual, just 357,530 kilometers (222,159 miles) away, thus the supermoon label.<\/p>\n
The moon will be even closer the night of Aug. 30 \u2014 a scant 357,344 kilometers (222,043 miles) distant. Because it\u2019s the second full moon in the same month, it will be what’s called a blue moon.<\/p>\n
\u201cWarm summer nights are the ideal time to watch the full moon rise in the eastern sky within minutes of sunset. And it happens twice in August,\u201d said retired NASA astrophysicist Fred Espenak, dubbed Mr. Eclipse for his eclipse-chasing expertise.<\/p>\n
The last time two full supermoons graced the sky in the same month was in 2018. It won\u2019t happen again until 2037, according to Italian astronomer Gianluca Masi, founder of the Virtual Telescope Project.<\/p>\n
Masi will provide a live webcast of Tuesday evening\u2019s supermoon as it rises over the Coliseum in Rome.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy plans are to capture the beauty of this … hopefully bringing the emotion of the show to our viewers,\u201d Masi said in an email. \u201cThe supermoon offers us a great opportunity to look up and discover the sky.\u201d <\/p>\n
This year\u2019s first supermoon was in July. The fourth and last will be in September. The two in August will be closer than either of those.<\/p>\n
Provided clear skies, binoculars or backyard telescopes can enhance the experience, Espenak said, revealing such features as lunar maria \u2014 the dark plains formed by ancient volcanic lava flows \u2014 and rays emanating from lunar craters.<\/p>\n
According to the Old Farmer\u2019s Almanac, the August full moon is traditionally known as the sturgeon moon. That\u2019s because of the abundance of that fish in the Great Lakes in August \u00a0hundreds of years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. \u2014 The cosmos is offering up a double feature in August: a pair of supermoons culminating in a rare blue moon. Catch the first show Tuesday evening as the full moon rises in the southeast, appearing slightly brighter and bigger than normal. That\u2019s because it will be closer than usual, just 357,530 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":495,"featured_media":11980,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[141],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/495"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}