A commercial airliner flies Northwest across Lake Michigan in front of the "Full Buck" supermoon, the first of four supermoons in 2023, July 3, 2023, in Chicago. The cosmos is offering up a double feature in August: a pair of supermoons. Catch the first show Tuesday night, Aug. 2, as the full moon rises in the southeast. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File)
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’s because it will be closer than usual, just 222,159 miles (357,530 kilometers) away, thus the supermoon label.
The moon will be even closer the night of Aug. 30 — a scant 222,043 miles (357,344 kilometers) distant. Because it’s the second full moon in the same month, it will be what's called a blue moon.
“Warm 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,” said retired NASA astrophysicist Fred Espenak, dubbed Mr. Eclipse for his eclipse-chasing expertise.
The last time two full supermoons graced the sky in the same month was in 2018. It won’t happen again until 2037, according to Italian astronomer Gianluca Masi, founder of the Virtual Telescope Project.
Masi will provide a live webcast of Tuesday evening’s supermoon, as it rises over the Coliseum in Rome.
“My plans are to capture the beauty of this ... hopefully bringing the emotion of the show to our viewers,” Masi said in an email.
“The supermoon offers us a great opportunity to look up and discover the sky,” he added.
This year’s first supermoon was in July. The fourth and last will be in September. The two in August will be closer than either of those.
Provided clear skies, binoculars or backyard telescopes can enhance the experience, Espenak said, revealing such features as lunar maria — the dark plains formed by ancient volcanic lava flows — and rays emanating from lunar craters.
According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, the August full moon is traditionally known as the sturgeon moon. That’s because of the abundance of that fish in the Great Lakes in August, hundreds of years ago.
President Joe Biden has gotten a second booster dose of the Pfizer COVID vaccine, and he used the occasion Wednesday to call on Congress to pass billions of dollars in additional funding to fight the pandemic.
Catching you up on what you need to know on March 30, 2022, with updates on what is happening in Kyiv, the FDA releases plans for a fourth dose of COVID vaccines, COVID subvariant BA.2 becomes dominant variant in the U.S., employees at Conde Nast form a union, and more.
A NASA astronaut is back on Earth after a yearlong, record-setting spaceflight. He caught a Russian ride from the International Space Station on Wednesday with two cosmonauts.
Blue Origin is gearing up for its first launch of the year, set for March 31st, but it's not the only one. NASA is also days away from making history with its first private mission to the International Space Station. Three amateur astronauts, who have each paid about $55 million for their seat, will reach the ISS and spend eight days at the off-earth outpost. Jim Cantrell, CEO and co-founder of Phantom Space, joins Cheddar News to discuss what the future of space tourism may look like.
Andrew Chanin, CEO of investment management firm ProcureAM, joined Cheddar to break down the many industries in the space economy and discuss what trends are driving the most growth. "Right now there's been so much media focus on space tourism. Why? Because last year it really debuted itself to the world," he said. "However it's less than 1 percent of the overall space economy, and there are many other parts of space which are actually driving this area."
Plastic has become the face of global pollution. To date, humans have produced 8.3 billion metric tons of it. Once discarded, plastic doesn’t biodegrade. Instead, it fragments into microplastics smaller than the size of a sesame seed and further into nanoplastics.
These tiny particles of plastic end up everywhere, deep in the ice of Antarctic glaciers or even inside our bodies.
So how much plastic is inside of us? And what does it mean for our health? Let’s find out.
Catching you up on what you Need to Know on Mar 29, 2022, with updates on the snow squall in Pennsylvania that caused a pileup killing three, the teacher's strike in Sacramento heading into week two, Walmart no longer selling tobacco products in select stores, and what meme stocks are up to this week.
Catching you up on what you Need to Know on Mar 28, 2022, with peace talks resuming in Ukraine as early as today, Colorado wildfires causing evacuations, Shanghai, China, ramping up restrictions once again, the Oscars debacle between Will Smith and Chris Rock, and more.
The U.S. market value of the plant-based food industry reached an all-time high last year. According to a new report from the Plant Based Food Association, retail sales of plant-based foods reached $7.4 billion, but questions are arising over whether the industry can sustain the levels of growth it had in the past few years. Julie Emmett, senior director of marketplace development at the Plant Based Food Association, joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
