Last night August’s Full Moon appeared — but wait — this year August gives us two Full Moons. The second one will appear on August 30.
Last evening, the full Sturgeon Moon appeared and there will be a full Blue Moon on August 30 — and — it will be the closest supermoon of the year.
If you’ve been reading this blog during the year, you’re aware that I’ve mentioned that there would be four super moons in a row this year — the one last night was the second in the sequence.
Superman is kind of a layman’s term for what astronomers call a perigean full Moon, which is when the full Moon occurs very near the exact time when the Moon is closest to the Earth in its orbit.
Near the end of the month, on August 30, a second full Moon — a Blue Moon — will make its appearance. The term Blue Moon is used when we have two full Moons in a single month. The August 30 supermoon will be the closest, biggest and brightest full supermoon of 2023. It will only be 222,043 miles from the Earth. The next time we’ll have a closer full supermoon is November 5, 2025 when the Moon will be 221,817 miles away.
Last night’s Full Moon, by tradition, was called the Sturgeon Moon because the giant sturgeon of the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain were most readily caught during this part of the summer.
A sturgeon is a fish that looks like it might be a dinosaur if it lived on land. They have often been referred to as “living fossils.” A little extensive research on my part found that today there are about 29 species worldwide — including the lake sturgeon found in the Great Lakes. Over the years they have evolved in size from the size of a bass to as big as a Volkswagen.
Females require about 20 years to start reproducing and they can only reproduce every 4 years. But — they can live up to 150 years.
Lake sturgeons are very rare today due to overfishing, pollution and damage to their habitat.
I guess something like that deserves to have a Moon named after them — so check it out, the Sturgeon Moon will still look full tonight.
— 30 —