When to See the Biggest and Brightest Full Moon of the Year
The full moon in July is the event of the year, crazy: the biggest and brightest moon of 2022 will rise on July 13th. Look up to the southeastern sky during moonrise to enjoy the moon.
The July Full Moon will reach its absolute peak of illumination at 2:37 AM ET, but we won’t be able to see it in America because Earth is in the way. It will still be very bright when it rises for us later. To find out the exact time of moonrise in your forest, use the moonrise and set moonrise calculator in The Old Farmer’s Almanac.
The July full moon, nicknamed “Deer Moon” or “Thunder Moon”, is a supermoon. It will appear brighter and larger than usual for a simple reason: it is closer to us. The Moon will be about 222,089 miles from Earth this month, about 150 miles closer than June, and June was also a supermoon month.
Buck Moon will appear about 7% larger than usual (which, frankly, is not that much). The real way to see what the Moon looks like at its largest is to catch it when it is closest to the horizon. The moon isn’t really bigger than when it’s higher in the night sky, but it does appear bigger because Earth has something to compare it to.
Why is the full moon in July called the Deer Moon or Thunder Moon?
The name “Deer Moon” is said to be derived from the Native American lunar calendar , because this is the time of year when the deer’s antlers are fully grown. Another popular name for the July moon is “Thunder Moon” because there are many thunderstorms in the summer of July, especially on the east coast. Other Native American moon names for July include “Molting Moon”, a Cree name; “Berry Moon” from Anishinaabe; and Dakota’s very specific name: “Moon when the bird cherry is ripe.”
It may be summer here, but it is winter on the other side of the world, which is why the Maori, the original inhabitants of New Zealand in the Southern Hemisphere, call this lunar/lunar month Hongoni and describe it like this: “It is very cold for a person now.” and kindles fires before which he warms himself.
What time is it on the moon?
If you want to know what time it is on the moon, there are two ways to look at the answer. First: “The time on the Moon is the same as on Earth.” Our system of measuring time, “Universal Time”, applies to everything in the universe.
But if you lived on the Moon, saying “June 21, 2022, 3:00 PM” would be useless, because Earth time is based on the position of the planet relative to the Sun (and atomic clocks), not the position of the moon. On the Moon, the months on Earth begin in different “seasons” in different years, years have nothing to do with the Moon’s orbit, and sometimes noon falls in the middle of the night – that would be temporary madness.
However, we have invented a moon-centric time system. This system, called “lunar standard time”, divides the lunar year into 12 “days”, each lasting about an Earth month. Each day is divided into 30 “cycles” lasting about an Earth hour.
The calendar began when Neil Armstrong first set foot on the surface of the moon, Earth time 02:56 GMT, July 21, 1969. Lunar time: year 1, day 1, cycle 1. But since no one lives on the moon ( that’s what we know about ), it’s not a very useful calendar.