July’s full moon is going to be a supermoon, attaining its perigee or closest point to our planet on July 13th.
The moon will be pretty close to Earth in its barely elliptical orbit, making it look slightly larger and brighter than usual. The “Buck Moon” or “Thunder Moon,” will officially attain its peak on July 13th, at 2:37 p.m. EDT.hile descriptions of “supermoons” vary, NASA eclipse viewer Fred Espenak considers July’s full moon as the third of four supermoons in a row.
New York City observers will watch the almost-full moon set at roughly 4:55 a.m. local time on July 13th, according to timeanddate.com; “the slightly waning moon will rise again at 9:00 p.m.”
Since full moons do monopolize the night sky and wash out fainter objects, it’s a great time to focus the skywatching efforts on using your eyes, binoculars, or a telescope to assess lunar features. With your naked eye, you can detect highlands and lowlands, which can take on specific shapes with cultural significance.
Binoculars or a telescope show off features in craters, mountains, ridges, and other huge features. Happily, the moon is an extraordinary target to practice observing as it is easy to find in the sky, it is an enormous object to track, and it reflects a lot of light for growing photographers.
