The Year ’ s Final Supermoon Reminds Us Why We Love the Night Sky

There is both very big moon news and very small moon news breaking this week—but the one that’s making the headlines is not necessarily the one you would expect. The very big moon news is a paper published today in the journal Science Advances, titled “Indigenous noble gasses in the moon’s interior.” It’s a Swiss-led study of lunar meteorites showing that “unbrecciated lunar mare basalts” reveal traces of “indigenous noble gasses” helium and neon, which they inherited from the Earth’s mantle, adding to the “already strong constraints” showing that the moon was formed by material inherited from the Earth and…and…your eyes are glazing over, aren’t they? [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] OK, then let’s go with the very small lunar news: The Sturgeon Moon! It’s coming! As has been widely—and somewhat breathlessly—reported all week long, on Thursday, Aug. 11, the fourth supermoon of 2022 will rise in the skies, reaching its peak illumination at 9:36 p.m. ET and putting on what most people consider a flat-out dazzling sky show. But why? What is a supermoon and why all the hoopla? There are 12 full moons every year and all things being equal, they’d be equally eye-catching. But all things aren’t equal. As I reported in June, during the Strawberry supermoon (which was named by Native American tribes because that month’s supermoon coinc...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Space Source Type: news