It’s a once-in-a-generation pairing: the start of astronomical summer and emergence of the full “Strawberry Moon.”
The moon officially reached 100 percent fullness at 7:02 a.m. Eastern Monday —about 11.5 hours before the evening solstice (6:34 p.m. Eastern).
Monday evening — about two hours after the solstice — the moon rises, almost fully illuminated, in the eight o’clock hour (8:41 p.m. Eastern in D.C.) along the East Coast.
While the sun is high in the sky at this time of year, the moon hangs low. “Even at its loftiest at 1 a.m, it’s downright wimpy-low,” writes Bob Berman of the Old Farmer’s Almanac. “This forces its light through thicker air, which also tends to be humid this time of year, and the combination typically makes it amber colored.”
The golden-orange hue given off by this low-suspended moon is the reason that one of its alternative names is “Honey Moon.” It also sometimes called the “Rose Moon” and “Mead Moon.”
