Enjoy the Full “Buck Moon” Tonight or Salmon Moon… It Depends

The second supermoon in 2022 is lighting the world tonight, and it gives us the brightest moment at 2:38 Eastern Time. It will be below the horizon at the time so wait for 4 hours to see the moon in the sky.

July 13th’s Full Buck Moon orbit is the closest, biggest, and brightest due to its proximity to earth and lowest in the sky. The Buck Moon will be 222,089.3 miles (357,418 km) from Earth. According to Almanac.com, “the full moon in July is called the Buck Moon because the antlers of male deer (bucks) are in full growth mode at this time. Bucks shed and regrow their antlers each year, producing a larger and more impressive set as the years go by.”

There are many other alternative names for these supermoon reference animals, such as Feather Moulting Moon (Cree) and Salmon Moon, a Tlingit (a member or a language of a North American people of the coasts and islands of southeastern Alaska and adjacent British Columbia.) term indicating when fish returned to the area and were ready to be harvested.

Plants and other variants refer to this supermoon, Berry Moon (Anishinaabe), Moon When the Chokecherries are Ripe (Dakota), Month of the Ripe Corn Moon (Cherokee), and Raspberry Moon (Algonquin, Ojibwe). All these names refer to the riping season of sweet berries in the hot summer.

Western Abenaki, a Native American tribe speaking Algonquian call this moon Thunder Moon; they lived in parts of Canada and the Northeast United States until being pushed west during American expansion, and Halfway Summer Moon (Anishinaabe) are alternative variants that refer to the weather and season.

The name of the Super Moon refers to the life of the Native Americans and how they lived. Those Full moons on their calendar reminded them to remember to harvest and give ceremonies to their gods.

The location of where you are matters when it comes to seeing the different shapes of the Buck Moon. However, the 13th of July is the best night to experience the full moon. Tomorrow, you will see 98.7 of the waning gibbous moon instead.

The next Super Moon, Sturgeon Moon, will be in our sight on August 11 expected.