Entertainment
Why is the moon so bright this month? Supermoon lighting up night sky
If you’ve noticed the moon looking particularly bright the past few days, you’re not alone.
This brightness is due to the upcoming supermoon, the first of the year, which is set to light up the night sky next weekend.
Here’s what’s happening.
Why is the moon so bright tonight?
The next full moon will occur on Monday, Aug. 19, 2024.
The moon will appear full starting the afternoon of August 18 and will continue to look full until around 2:30 p.m. on August 20.
As the moon nears fullness, more of it is visible at night and appears brighter in the sky.
This is also the first supermoon of the year, which also makes the moon appear brighter.
What is a supermoon?
A supermoon occurs when the moon is at its closest point to Earth in its orbit while also being full.
This makes the moon appear both brighter and larger than a typical full moon. This phenomenon is why the moon might seem extraordinarily bright as it nears fullness.
Why is the August moon called the sturgeon moon?
The sturgeon moon gets its name from the giant sturgeon fish that were once abundant and easily caught in the Great Lakes during this time of year.
Native American tribes and early settlers relied on these fish as a staple food source. Today, sturgeons are much rarer due to overfishing, but their legacy lives on in the name of this moon.
Why Is the blue moon red?
This August full moon is not only a supermoon but also a seasonal blue moon. This term refers to the third full moon in a season that has four full moons. However, despite its name, the moon won’t actually be blue. On rare occasions, the moon can appear blue when viewed through particles like smoke and dust in the atmosphere, which filter out red and yellow wavelengths.
This month, the moon might also appear red due to the summer heat and dry conditions that create a haze in the atmosphere, giving it a fiery glow. This red hue is why the August full moon is sometimes called the “red moon.”
Christina Welch still remembers what the sky looked like the day a wildfire came within 2 miles (3.2 km) of her Santa Rosa, California, home.
It was the Tubbs fire of 2017, the most destructive in California history at the time. Ms Welch’s neighbour woke her in the morning, and told her to grab her belongings and get out. When Ms Welch opened the door, ashes were falling from the sky and smoke filled the air.
Then, in 2019, the Kincade wildfire forced her parents to evacuate for five days.
It was the final push for Ms Welch. After advice from a friend, she packed her belongings and drove across the country to her new hometown: Duluth, Minnesota.
“It was just the culmination of all of it,” the 42-year-old said. “There’s only so many times that I was going to go through every fall of worrying about what is going to set on fire, if I was going to lose a house.”
Ms Welch is one of several people who has left California in recent years because of the frequency of extreme weather, even before the most destructive wildfires in Los Angeles history killed 28 people this month.
Climate change has made the grasses and shrubs that are fuelling the Los Angeles fires more vulnerable to burning, scientists say.
Climate’s ‘whiplash’ linked to raging LA fires
California is naturally prone to fires, but scientists believe that a warming world is increasing the conditions conducive to longer fire seasons and larger burned areas in the western US.
Just this week, a new, fast-moving wildfire broke out in Los Angeles County, north-west of the city, forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate a region already reeling from destruction. Trump plans to visit Southern California on Friday to witness the devastation from the blazes.
The latest series of The Traitors is coming to an end, after weeks of wild accusations, wilder betrayals and Claudia Winkleman’s devious looks-to-camera.
Many of us like to think we could handle the pressures and skullduggery of being a traitor in the remote Scottish castle. But could you really make it to the end undetected?
Work through our scenarios – from sitting at the roundtable with Claudia to rowing across an icy loch – to find out if you’ve got what it takes to be a treacherous mastermind, or whether you are far too faithful for that.
Quiz compiled by: Steven McIntosh, Helen Bushby, Yasmin Rufo, Rosemary McCabe, Jonathan Holmes
Netflix musical Emilia Pérez leads this year’s Oscars nominations, with Wicked also among the top contenders.
Emilia Pérez, about a Mexican drug lord who changes gender, has 13 nominations in total – although one of its stars, Selena Gomez, missed out.
Wicked received 10 nominations – including nods for British actress Cynthia Erivo and her co-star Ariana Grande.
Three-and-a-half-hour epic The Brutalist, starring Adrien Brody, also has 10 nominations, while Demi Moore has the first Oscar nomination of her career
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