RHODE ISLAND — The full buck moon on Sunday shouldn’t be a dud if weather conditions permit in Rhode Island, but it’s not among the much-ballyhooed parade of four consecutive supermoons that awaits moon-gazers in late summer and early fall.
The moon will be at its fullest at 5:13 a.m. Sunday, but that’s just a technicality. It will appear bright and full as it rises just after sunset on Saturday. Moonrise is around 8:18 p.m. Saturday. It will also appear to be full on Sunday and Monday nights.
Subscribe
The National Weather Service predicts mostly cloudy skies this weekend, so hopefully the clouds don’t cover the view.
The July full moon is known as the buck moon because it occurs at the same time of year when new antlers emerge from a male deer’s forehead. Other handless given this month’s full moon are the thunder moon due to frequent thunderstorms at this time of year and the hay moon, because farmers race to get their hay in the barn ahead of those storms.
It’s still called the Miin Glizis, or berry moon, among the Anishinaabeg people, according to the Center for Native American Studies. Other names are the feather molting moon, as it was called by the Cree, and the salmon moon, a Tlingit term that references the return of fish to the area, according to The Old Farmer’s Almanac.
Next month’s full sturgeon moon on Aug. 19 will be the first of four consecutive supermoons.
Supermoons occur when the moon’s closest approach to Earth in its elliptical orbit, called perigee, coincides with the full moon. It makes our natural satellite look bigger, brighter and closer, earning the supermoon moniker.
The Aug. 19 full moon is also a seasonal blue moon. A seasonal blue moon is the true definition of a blue moon, and refers to the third full moon in a season that has four full moons. A more common understanding of a blue moon, the second full moon in a calendar month, is borne out of misunderstanding of the original definition.
The Sept. 18 full harvest moon, the Oct. 17 full hunters moon and the Nov. 18 full beaver moon also qualify as supermoons.
The term supermoon didn’t come from astronomy. Rather, astrologer Richard Nolle coined the term in 1979, defining a supermoon as a new or full moon that occurs when it is at its closest approach to Earth in a given orbit, making it appear bigger and brighter.
“Interestingly, nobody paid much attention to Nolle’s definition until March 19, 2011, when the full moon arrived at an exceptionally close perigee, coming within 126 miles (203 kilometers) of its closest possible approach to Earth,” Joe Rao wrote for Space.com.
Until Nolle “branded” the supermoon, astronomers called the full moon that coincided with perigee as a “perigean full moon,” and it passed without notice.
“Now,” Rao continued, “it seems that every time a full moon coincides with perigee, it is referred to as a supermoon.”
Meteors also start flying in July. The most anticipated of the summer meteor showers, the Perseids, have started and will peak Aug. 11-13 before winding down on Sept. 1. It’s a usually prolific shooting star show with 50 to 100 meteors an hour visible at the peak under dark skies. They’re also rich in fireballs, larger explosions of light and color that are brighter than typical meteors and whose “tails” last longer than typical meteor streaks.
The Perseids intersect with two other meteor showers also underway, the Delta Aquariid meteor shower, which peaks July 21 and continues through Aug. 21; and the Alpha Capricornids, which have a “plateau-like” maximum peak on July 30-31 and end Aug. 13.
Depending on solar activity, skywatchers in areas that don’t usually see the aurora borealis may see the ethereal curtains of pink green, purple and yellow lights in the nighttime sky. This is a particular active time for solar flares as the sun reaches what’s called “solar maximum” in its approximately 11-year cycle.
In May, an extremely larger and powerful geomagnetic storm sent Americans on slow country lights looking for northern lights displays, which typically are restricted to Earth’s polar regions. They were rewarded as far south as Florida and Puerto Rico.
The display, the result of a G5-level geomagnetic storm, was nothing short of epic, coloring the skies as far south as Florida, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas and Mexico.
Space weather scientists think solar maximum is already underway and could continue until early 2026. That almost certainly means more frequent and intense flares will be spewed from the sun’s hot, hot outer atmosphere more often as the peak approaches.
Related:
Have a news tip? Email jimmy.bentley@patch.com.