People across the U.S. can catch the strawberry supermoon on Tuesday night, if the weather permits.
According to NASA, the full moon will be at its closest point to the Earth for this orbit at 7:24 p.m. EDT Tuesday. It will be close enough to be considered a supermoon, making it the second one of 2022.
It will appear full Tuesday evening into Wednesday morning, and it’ll be the lowest full moon of the year, reaching only 23.3 degrees above the horizon Wednesday at 1:56 a.m. EDT, the agency said.
Full strawberry supermoon is seen on June 14 in Indonesia.
WF Sihardian/NurPhoto via Getty Images
How did strawberry moon gets its name?
The name has nothing to do with its color. Traditionally, the strawberry moon is the full moon in June, which is typically the last of spring or first of summer.
According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, the name was used by Native American Algonquin tribes that live in northeastern U.S. and Ojibwe, Dakota, and Lakota peoples. It was used to mark the ripening of strawberries ready to be gathered in June.
How to watch the strawberry supermoon
After sunset, sky gazers are recommended to look southeast to watch the full moon rise above the horizon, the Almanac said. It reached peak illumination earlier, on Tuesday, at 7:52 a.m. EDT, but it won’t be visible in North American time zones until Tuesday evening, as some parts of the world have already seen the supermoon. The Almanac can calculate moonrise and moonset times based on your location here.
“Full moons are a fun time to observe lunar features, as the rest of the sky will be washed out by the light. With the naked eye, you can see the vast highlands and lowlands of the moon, which can appear to be certain shapes and generate stories about those shapes, depending on the culture you follow,” according to Space.com.
For those that won’t stay up, a free livestream from the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy is also showing the full moon rise over Rome.
And if you miss this supermoon, there will be another on July 13.