On the night of June 14th, a rare celestial event will occur: a supermoon. A supermoon is when a full moon is at the closest point to Earth in its orbit. One peticularly special supermoon is the strawberry moon which occurs only in June.
A little background on the strawberry moon is that its name came from the Algonquin Native American tribe in Northeastern United States and Eastern Canada. The moon’s name refers to this tribe’s strawberry harvesting season and not the distinct color of the moon.
Full moons occur often, about every month, but not every full moon is a supermoon, in fact, there are only three to four supermoons a year. One distinctive disparity between supermoons and normal full moons is that a supermoon is about 17% larger and 30% brighter than a moon at its farthest point in orbit from Earth (NASA).
Supermoons have different names according to what month they occur in. These names come from cultures ranging from Native American to Medieval Europeans. Below is a visual representation of each month’s supermoon: