The world is about to be treated to a rare kind of “Strawberry Moon” when it rises in the sky tonight.
It will reach its fullest moment on the evening of 10 June and into the morning of the 11th, though will be visible for a few days afterwards.
It will rise in the evening as normal and should be easily visible in the night sky. Unlike other celestial spectacles, it doesn’t need any particular preparation or equipment – seeing the pink moon just means going out and looking up.
There are ways to make the process a little easier, however. It might be useful to look up the exact time of moonrise, for instance, and apps such as Dark Sky can be used to locate where the Moon is sitting in the sky.
The “Strawberry Moon” name doesn’t refer to anything about the Moon itself. Instead, it is just the name given to June’s full moon, and is apparently taken from the fact that it tends to appear around harvesting season for the fruit.
But it may appear a little pink. This month’s Moon will be relatively near the horizon, and when that happens the light that hits it can be scattered through our Earth’s atmosphere, giving the planet a red, orange or pink tinge.
This month’s Moon is also notable for another reason. It will sit very low in the sky – known as a “major lunar standstill” – which only happens every 19 years.
When the Moon is low in the sky, it appears larger because of the contrast with the objects visible on the horizon. The effect can actually mean that it looks much bigger than at the times it gets the name “supermoon”, when it is closer to us but can appear smaller if it is high in the sky.
