May's first full moon, known as the Flower Moon, will be 100% illuminated at 1:24 p.m. EDT Friday (May 1). Although that moment occurs during daylight hours for North America, the moon will appear full at night on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

As always, the most striking time to watch the full moon will be as it rises in the east. This month, that happens during dusk on May Day — which marks the halfway point between March's spring equinox and June's summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere — when it rises shortly after sunset.

This Flower Moon is this year's first micromoon, meaning it occurs when the moon is near apogee — its farthest point from Earth in its slightly elliptical orbit. The moon will be about 250,000 miles (402,000 kilometers) from Earth — around 5% farther away than average. As a result, it will appear slightly smaller and dimmer than usual. The difference is subtle, but it contrasts with the larger, brighter supermoons seen when the moon is closer to Earth. This year's supermoon season begins in November, with a particularly large supermoon on tap for Christmas Eve.

Despite appearing relatively small, the Flower Moon will still look large when viewed on the horizon. This effect is due to the "moon illusion," a trick of the mind that makes our natural satellite appear larger when it's viewed next to foreground objects like buildings or trees. As it rises, the Flower Moon will also appear orange due to Rayleigh scattering.

The Flower Moon gets its name from the flowers that bloom in the Northern Hemisphere in May, according to Time and Date, with Native Americans also calling it the Budding Moon, Egg Laying Moon and Planting Moon. Other names include the Mothers' Moon, Bright Moon, Hare Moon and Grass Moon. The Center for Native American Studies states that the Anishinaabe people of the Great Lakes region called the full moon Nimebine Giizis, or Sucker Moon.

The second full moon of the month will occur on May 31. Known as a Blue Moon, it makes May 2026 a rare two-full-moon month. According to NASA, only 6% of full moons are Blue Moons, which can occur only in the last two or three days of the month. May's Blue Moon will also be a micromoon, being the most distant ‪—‬ and, therefore, the smallest ‪—‬ full moon of the year.

Although you can easily see the full moon with the naked eye, a good backyard telescope or pair of stargazing binoculars can help you spot famous landmarks, including Apollo landing sites and craters. A decent camera will also let you take stunning photos of Earth's natural satellite.

How much do you know about the moon? Test your lunar smarts with our moon quiz!

While flying just a few thousand miles above the moon on April 6, Artemis II astronauts reported seeing a handful of bright, fleeting flashes of light on the lunar surface, leaving mission scientists on Earth buzzing with excitement.

The excitement comes with good reason for scientists planning future lunar missions: These brief flashes, caused by tiny meteorites striking the moon, help researchers track when and where impacts occur. Such data can improve scientists' understanding of the risks these impacts pose to long-term infrastructure and a sustained human presence on the moon.

The moon's heavily cratered surface is no stranger to such impacts, and smaller ones occur almost daily with minimal risk to future lunar bases. But with space rocks slamming into the moon at tens of thousands of miles per hour — and no atmosphere to slow them — larger impacts remain a concern for scientists monitoring potential threats to critical infrastructure and crew safety.

"One has to plan for the less-frequent, more hazardous events," David Kring, a scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, told Live Science. Back in 2016, Kring proposed the idea that future moon explorers should try to detect such impact flashes on the lunar far side. "The lunar flashes the Artemis II astronauts observed remind us to plan for that contingency," Kring said.

"Audible screams of delight"

The Artemis II crew spotted the flashes during their historic flyby around the lunar far side, when the moon briefly blocked the sun and created a total solar eclipse that lasted nearly an hour and left the far side in complete darkness. Against this stark backdrop, the crew observed at least four millisecond-long flashes on the lunar surface, and possibly as many as six, commander Reid Wiseman radioed to mission control in Houston.

"There was a little bit of giddiness," Wiseman said through the mission livestream, reporting a fresh flash spotted by crewmate Jeremy Hansen even as he relayed earlier observations. "It was definitely impact flashes on the moon."

"Incredible news, Reid," science officer Kelsey Young responded from mission control, raising her hand to her forehead in awe. There were "audible screams of delight" from scientists as the observations came in, Young told reporters at an April 7 news conference.

Scientists on Earth have already begun working to match the crew's observations with data from the moon-orbiting Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, with the goal of refining existing models of how frequently such impacts occur. To do so, researchers plan to combine astronaut reports with orbital data to extract key measurable details about the flashes, including their brightness, the meteorites' masses, and whether the events created fresh craters on the lunar surface.

Meteorites and moonquakes

A less-visible consequence of these impacts is the shock waves that ripple through the moon. Such "moonquakes," when recorded by seismometers, can reveal how energetic and potentially damaging each strike was.

Like the Artemis II crew, Apollo astronauts reported seeing a handful of impact flashes, but most occurred too far from the seismometers operating at the time to be detected, a recent analysis found. Even so, Apollo-era instruments recorded about 1,700 impact-related moonquakes. Some were powerful enough to "cause boulders to roll downslope," Kring said, while the largest could "cause crater and canyon walls to collapse," which would pose risks to future lunar habitats.

Currently, however, no active seismometers are operating on the moon to support the Artemis era.

"Hopefully the first landed Artemis mission will change that," Nick Schmerr, a geophysicist at the University of Maryland who co-authored the analysis cross-referencing Apollo-era flashes with moonquakes, told Live Science.

Seismometers are among the instruments NASA plans to deploy through a fleet of early robotic missions ahead of crewed landings planned for 2028 and beyond. By combining astronaut observations with data from seismometers, telescopes and orbiters, scientists could precisely locate impact events and track their effects.

"We'd certainly want to know about any nearby impacts for a moon base, especially if they hit near crucial infrastructure," said Schmerr, who is also the deputy principal investigator for a planned seismometer known as the Lunar Environmental Monitoring Station for Artemis (LEMS). "The more observations of a particular flash from different observers, the better."

Over time, such observations could help scientists refine estimates of how much asteroid and comet debris is striking the moon, Kring said. Larger impacts can excavate material from deep beneath the surface to reveal lunar geology that would be inaccessible otherwise. If such events occur near the polar regions, Kring added, they may even expose ice that NASA and other space agencies suspect is present and could someday be harnessed for life support and rocket fuel.

Looking further ahead, analyzing moon samples ferried to Earth from Artemis landing sites could allow researchers to identify the types of meteorites striking the moon and track how their composition has shifted over roughly 4 billion years of solar system history, Kring said. Ultimately, though, these impacts matter "because they produce and modify the lunar soil that future Artemis astronauts will walk on," he added.

How much do you know about the moon? Test your knowledge with our moon quiz!

Whether you're watching a spectacular lunar eclipse or studying lunar features through a telescope, there are plenty of reasons to gaze at the moon.

But does the moon look the same from everywhere on Earth?

The short answer is no, astronomers told Live Science. Not only does the moon's appearance change from place to place, but it even seems to swivel in some locations from moonrise to moonset.

"How we see the Moon and Stars is all a matter of perspective," Pamela Gay, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, a U.S.-based nonprofit that investigates solar system exploration, told Live Science in an email.

From the North to South poles

If you were to look at a full moon from Earth's North Pole, you'd see the iconic Tycho crater, with its splayed ejecta rays at the bottom of the moon's face. However, from the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, situated exactly at our planet's South Pole, Tycho crater would appear at the moon's top.

Less-dramatic changes in the moon's orientation appear from temperate regions. A diagram collated by the Lunar and Planetary Institute shows that the moon's orientation in Wellington, New Zealand, is 97.1 degrees counterclockwise to that visible in Los Angeles. This angle depends on the difference in latitude between the locations.

In other words, while someone in Illinois might see an upright "man on the moon," for an observer in Sydney, the "moon is now a bunny jumping downward," Gay said.

This happens because your orientation with respect to space-based objects changes as you travel between latitudes. Observers on opposite ends of Earth look at the moon from opposite vantage points.

Still, all places on Earth see more or less the same face of the moon. That's because the moon completes one rotation on its axis in exactly the same time it takes to orbit Earth once ‪—‬ a phenomenon called synchronous rotation (though librations, or wobbles, cause the view to slightly vary).

From crescent to boat

The moon's phases during each lunar cycle — the 29.5-day cycle from full moon to new moon and back — also differ between the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

"This is a result of how the local horizon plane … is oriented relative to the positions of the Earth, moon and sun," Catherine Miller, observatory specialist at Mittelman Observatory at Middlebury College in Vermont, told Live Science by email. Far from the equator, she said, the boundary between the moon's unlit and lit regions is aligned nearly vertically, so the moon's phases progress horizontally.

But while Northern Hemisphere observers watch the moon grow and shrink from right to left, the opposite occurs for the Southern Hemisphere, as per the Lunar Planetary Institute. This difference, Miller said, again stems from the different perspectives from the hemispheres. That's why unicode calendar symbols (the kind you see in your phone's emoji list) for the first- and third-quarter moons — which have been designed from a Northern Hemisphere viewpoint — appear inaccurate for Southern Hemisphere observers, according to a 2017 Unicode Technical Committee document.

Things get even more interesting at the equator. The moon, seen at the time it rises, expands vertically rather than sideways as it heads toward the full-moon phase. This means the crescent moon often looks like a boat. However, across most of Earth's surface, the moon's phases change from being more vertical to more horizontal (and vice versa) over different seasons, according to the book "Astronomy for All Ages" (Globe Pequot Publishing, 2000).

Changes through the night

In many places, the orientation of the moon's face appears to rotate about its center as it travels across the sky on a given night, Miller said. For example, at the equator, it looks like the "Moon's face can rotate by roughly 180 degrees in an evening," she said.

This is because the moon's orbit is nearly aligned with the orbital plane that Earth takes around the sun. Consequently, it frequently passes nearly over the zenith (the point in the sky directly above an observer) at the equator, according to a 2025 article in the Journal of the British Astronomical Association.

When the moon rises from the east at the equator, it will set to the west after having crossed the zenith. At moonrise, you will be facing due east, but to see the moon at moonset, you will have to rotate your body by 180 degrees. So, it's not the moon that has twisted, but people watching the moon who are turning their bodies to follow the moon's path. "It's all about how [the moon] follows that arc," Gay said.

This phenomenon is not true at higher latitudes, where the moon does not pass over the zenith, so you do not have to turn by a full 180 degrees to see it.

This apparent "rolling" of the moon decreases as you move away from the equator, toward the poles. The farther the moon is away from the zenith, the less it appears to twist between moonrise and moonset.

So, the next time you travel, take a peek at the moon. You might just be stunned.

What do you know about the moon? Test your knowledge with our moon quiz!

The four Artemis II astronauts will return to Earth on Friday (April 10) — delivering not only themselves but also a precious trove of images from their lunar journey. And the geologists supporting the mission can hardly wait to dive in.

"The images are spectacular, absolutely," Gordon Osinski, a crater specialist and planetary geologist at Canada's Western University who has been deeply involved in the Artemis II crew’s geology training, told Live Science after seeing the first photos of the crew’s seven-hour lunar flyby.

Osinski said that the small batch of images transmitted to Earth so far hint at big discoveries about the moon's geology — and could help shape the hunt for lunar samples in NASA's upcoming crewed moon landings, starting with Artemis IV as soon as 2028.

A green, brown and flashy moon

Two geological findings stand out so far. One of these is impact flashes — brief but bright flashes of light from when space rocks slam into the moon, leaving craters behind.

Artemis II astronauts Reid Wiseman and Jeremy Hanson reported seeing at least five of these flashes during their lunar flyby. Geologists hope to review the crew's images, once they return to Earth, to potentially identify the craters associated with the impacts.

"The conditions that [the crew] had to view those was perfect," Osinski said, referring to the crew's passage over the lunar terminator — the stark dividing line between the moon's bright day-side and dark night-side, where contrast is heightened and flashes are easier to spot.

Secondly, mission scientists are eager to investigate the crew’s descriptions of lunar colors. Geologists have only heard a few quick impressions from the crew so far, mainly over voice communications open to the public. But the Artemis II crew was recording more lunar flyby observations by voice and in notes in an archive that will take weeks to review.

The astronauts reported some intriguing things, such as patches of green and brown on the lunar surface.

"We do know there is color on the lunar surface," Osinski said. The human eye, he added, is more sensitive to color than the cameras on board Artemis II, so "that's definitely going to be something interesting to follow up."

The human touch in space

For years, Osinski has been giving geologic training to Artemis II crew members. Hansen is a repeat contributor to Osinski's remote Canadian crater expeditions, often done alongside Indigenous groups. During Artemis II preparation, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency backup astronaut Jenni Gibbons joined Hansen and Osinski on a 2023 expedition to a moon-like crater in northern Labrador, Canada.

Because the Artemis II astronauts could not sample the lunar surface directly, they were trained on how to make descriptions. They also used "situational awareness" for some situations, such as distinguishing between volcanic and impact processes, although the bulk of the interpretation will require months of work on Earth by geologists after the mission is complete.

But there is more that the Artemis II astronauts can provide. The astronauts form part of a group of less than 30 people who have seen the moon close up in-person, enabling them to bring human eyes and experiences to observations.

What's more, Artemis II is the first lunar astronaut mission in nearly two generations, enabling the astronauts (and their supporting scientists) to bring decades of insights into crater impacts, water ice and other features of the moon that Apollo officials did not have access to. The images Artemis II sent to Earth so far are just a subset of what's on board. Osinski said that in particular, he is interested in seeing the high-resolution 400-milimeter (16 inches) lens images by the crew to compare with images taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Bringing the moon back home

After Artemis II returns, Osinski and other geologists will take what was learned from the astronaut observations to work on future lunar surface missions. Planning has been ongoing for the surface work for two years, with the team now working on items such as narrowing down which sites might be useful to land at, and announcing which participating scientists will join.

Jacob Bleacher, NASA's chief exploration scientist, told Live Science the geology teams are working on landing products for the first astronauts on the surface, and are expecting to get more data from commercial landing missions supporting NASA. Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost mission was the first to make it there, achieving 60 days of operations in 2025. "We procured a good bit of data from them," Bleacher said, and the hope is that more companies will touch down before Artemis IV brings astronauts to the lunar surface in 2028.

For now, geologists are already hard at work making a plan for the moon-sample return.

Osinski is co-investigator of the geology team that will support the Artemis IV astronauts. Osinski said his team will likely be working with a lower-resolution live video feed that will enable, at least to an extent, the geologists on Earth to help the astronauts on site with observations.

That said, Artemis surface astronauts may also have to make quick decisions about sampling, which will be another training regime, Osinski said, requiring them to work independently.

"They might have to be making a split-second decision on the surface, if they're running out of time at a station: you know, 'Do I choose this one or this one?' And there might not be time for the back and forth with the science team on Mission Control," Osinski said.

NASA has released its first batch of photos taken by the Artemis II astronauts during their historic flyby around the far side of the moon.

The first image, dubbed "Earthset," shows our planet disappearing behind the moon's pockmarked face and is reminiscent of the "Earthrise" photo taken by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders in 1968. An advancing shadow delineates the night side of our planet, where billions of humans slept as the Artemis II crew made history.

Not to be outdone, a second new image shows a stunning solar eclipse witnessed as the astronauts dipped behind the moon — granting them roughly 40 minutes of complete radio silence to soak in the view.

"When we were on the far side of the moon, looking back at Earth, you really felt like you weren't in a capsule," said Artemis II mission specialist Jeremy Hansen. "You'd been transported to the far side of the moon. And it really just bent your mind. It was an extraordinary human experience. We're so grateful for it."

The Artemis II crewmembers are the first people in history to view a solar eclipse from behind the moon. Totality ‪—‬ the complete blocking of the sun by the lunar disk ‪—‬ lasted about one hour. During that time, the astronauts reported seeing bright planets (including Mars, Venus and Saturn) alongside the stars.

The faint glow of Earth's light and wisps of the sun's corona, which they described as "baby hairs," appeared on the edges of the lunar disk. (To safely view the sun's reappearance, the team wore solar eclipse glasses, just as we do on Earth.)

"This continues to be unreal," Artemis II pilot Victor Glover said at one point during the seven-hour flyby. "The sun has gone behind the moon, and the corona is still visible, and it's bright and creates a halo almost around the entire moon. The Earth is so bright out there, and the moon is just hanging in front of us."

"You'd fall straight to the center of the moon"

The flyby made Glover, Hansen, mission specialist Christina Koch and commander Reid Wiseman the first people in history to see the entire lunar far side — a feat that was impossible during the Apollo missions due to those missions' flight paths.

"Boy, I am loving the terminator," Glover called down to mission control, referring to the dividing line between day and light on the moon. "There's just so much magic in the terminator — the islands of light, the valleys that look like black holes. You'd fall straight to the center of the moon if you stepped in some of those. It's just so visually captivating."

Near the terminator line, the team also discovered two new lunar craters, which they asked to be named Integrity, after the crew capsule's official call sign, and Carroll, in honor of Wiseman's late wife.

During the flyby, the crew marveled over green and brown hues across the moon's surface, documenting the previously unseen craters and spotting new ones being made in the form of multiple impact flashes from meteors crashing into the lunar surface. All of these observations and the images they hand-captured with smartphones were fed back to NASA's lunar and planetary scientists to investigate important clues on how the moon and Earth came to be.

The flyby swung the astronauts out a maximum distance of 252,760 miles (406,777 kilometers) from Earth, breaking the previous record for the farthest humans in history by roughly 4,100 miles (6,600 km).

Much like the two dozen other astronauts who have been to the moon, the crew expressed that they felt changed by what they saw.

"When we have that perspective and we compare it to our home of Earth, it just reminds us how much we have in common," Koch said. "Everything we need, Earth provides. And that is somewhat of a miracle and one that you can't truly know until you've had the perspective of the other."

You can see the rest of the images in NASA's first release here.

For most of human history, the moon has been more than a distant object in our night sky. It has served as a clock, a guide, a deity and a scientific focus. Now, as NASA's Artemis II mission returns astronauts to the lunar system for the first time in over 50 years, humanity's relationship with our celestial neighbor may never be the same.

In her book "Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are" (Penguin Random House, 2025), science writer Rebecca Boyle traces that deep relationship, showing how the moon has shaped not just Earth itself but also the way we understand our place in the universe. The book journeys through history with a lunar lens, with Boyle weaving science with civilization and culture.

Live Science spoke with Boyle about her book, why humanity continues to be fascinated by the moon, and how NASA's Artemis program may change how we view our lunar companion.

Kenna Hughes-Castleberry: What are some of the biggest ways humanity's view of the moon has changed over the centuries?

Rebecca Boyle: This is something that I did in my book, was try to figure out what are the earliest relationships people had to the moon. As far as I could find, and as far as there are records for, I think the oldest relationship we have with the moon is through timekeeping ‪—‬ so for serving this practical use of letting us know how much time has passed and, crucially, helping us plan for future time, which is a pretty uniquely human characteristic as far as we know.

People developed calendars using the moon on every continent on Earth. We still use some of those today. The Hebrew calendar is still a lunar calendar; the Islamic calendar is still a lunar solar calendar. In Asia, it's still the primary timekeeping system, which is why we have the Lunar New Year in China.

Soon after that, we also used it as this sort of watchful deity. A personification of the moon is one of the oldest religious figures on Earth in all cultures that we've tracked back in time. And I think it's definitely changed since Apollo, in my opinion, since we walked up there and saw it was a real place, but I hope people still think about those old ways.

KHC: Why has the moon so often been both an object of science and a cultural symbol?

RB: It's the most obvious thing in the sky besides the sun. You might wonder, why is the moon the same size in the sky? Why is it always there too, and why does it provide so much illumination? So, it's an irrefutably important thing.

Once we learned other planets had moons, [we were] also wondering why they're different and what makes ours unique, and why it's so important to Earth and what it can tell us about Earth.

KHC: How did the Apollo era shape how we view the moon compared with previous generations?

RB: I think it made it real for the first time in a way that it's hard for us to recognize now, 50-plus years on. And I think it was a really transformative moment for the moon and our understanding of the moon ‪—‬ the fact that we actually made it up there and brought pieces of it home. We learned so much about the moon's composition and how it's different than we expected, and it tells us all these stories about the history of Earth. I think that's an ongoing story.

KHC: How do you think the Artemis II mission will change how we look at the moon?

RB: It's sort of this generation's moment to understand in a new way the connection between the moon and this planet and sort of reframe its importance to human history. It's the only moon like it that we've ever found. It's a huge object, [and] it's really far away. And that combination of facts plays a really important role in the climate of Earth, the geologic history of Earth, and the history of life.

I think there's a very solid argument that we wouldn't be here without it. The moons of Mars have nothing to do with Mars; they're just sort of there, like potatoes that just fly around Mars … whereas our moon is like a companion world, and I don't think people think of it that way ‪—‬ and I think Artemis is a chance for people to reframe that relationship.

KHC: From a cultural standpoint, what does it mean that we're going back to the moon and talking about future lunar missions and even a moon base?

RB: One thing that's been on my mind a lot this week is that we take space for granted, [and] we take NASA for granted. This mission this week is evidence that the work happens on such long timescales with incredibly dedicated, intelligent people who really care, and they deserve our admiration, our respect, our taxpayer dollars … and our moral support.

I think just getting off Earth in that rocket is such an achievement that I think people take it for granted. And I hope this is like a wake-up call ‪—‬ these missions that all of a sudden crop up in the national consciousness have actually been building for years and decades. I think whatever reasons people have for paying attention to Artemis, I hope that they're realizing at the same time what it takes to do this.

Editor's note: This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Test your lunar knowledge with our moon quiz!

April's full moon, known as the Pink Moon, is the first full moon of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. It will be at its fullest on Wednesday, April 1, but it will also look bright and full Tuesday and Thursday (March 31 and April 2). Only on Wednesday, though, will it appear close to the bright star Spica, offering a double skywatching treat.

April's Pink Moon isn't named for its color, which doesn't change. Instead, the name comes from the pink phlox wildflowers that are native to North America and often bloom in April, according to The Old Farmer's Almanac.

Other Native American names for April's full moon include the Breaking Ice Moon (Algonquin), the Moon When the Streams Are Again Navigable (Dakota), the Budding Moon of Plants and Shrubs (Tlingit), and the Moon of the Red Grass Appearing (Oglala). The Center for Native American Studies reports that it's known as the Broken Snowshoe Moon among many Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe) Indigenous people of the Great Lakes region.

April's Pink Moon also often has a role in Jewish and Western Christian traditions. Its rise marks the beginning of the Jewish festival of Pesach (Passover), which, this year, begins at sunset on April 1, the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan. However, that's purely because the Hebrew calendar is lunisolar.

In Christianity, the first full moon of spring is associated with Easter Sunday. According to the U.S. Naval Observatory, Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first ecclesiastical full moon that occurs on or after the day of the vernal equinox. The equinox was on March 20 this year, so with the next full moon on April 1, Easter Sunday will be on April 5. Easter in the Eastern Orthodox tradition will be a week later, on Sunday, April 12.

The best night to watch the full moon will be April 1, when it will rise in the eastern sky as the sun sets across North America. Check the times of moonrise and moonset for your location, and find a spot with a view of the low eastern horizon.

You'll see Spica, the bright star in the constellation Virgo, beneath the Pink Moon. The following night, Thursday, April 2, the waning gibbous moon will be just 1.8 degrees from Spica, according to AstroPixels.

After the Pink Moon, the next full moon will be the Flower Moon, also called the Corn Planting Moon and the Milk Moon, on May 1. It will be the first of two full moons in May, with the second being a so-called Blue Moon (the second full moon in a single calendar month) on May 31.

Moon quiz: What do you know about our nearest celestial neighbor?

As the full moon started to set over North America in the early hours of March 3, it briefly plunged into the darkest part of Earth's shadow — resulting in the last total lunar eclipse visible to the U.S. until 2029.

If you missed the early morning spectacle, you can still watch the whole thing unfold via live stream recordings, or enjoy some of the first images of the event below.

Lasting about 5 hours and 39 minutes total, the lunar eclipse began late at night for most skywatchers in North America, with the spectacular "totality" phase — the roughly 1-hour period where the moon drifts through the center of Earth's dark umbral shadow — lasting about an hour.

Viewers on the East Coast had a slim chance to see totality from roughly 6:00 to 7:00 a.m. EST, just as the moon set below the horizon. Those living in CST and PST timezones had a better shot at seeing the moon turn red in the early morning hours (weather and cloud cover permitting).

Skywatchers in Australia, New Zealand, and eastern Asia also had auspicious views, with up to 3 billion people around the world at least getting to see part of the eclipse, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com.

Total lunar eclipses are also known as "blood moons," due to the reddish hue the moon takes when it slips into Earth's umbra.

This is due to an effect known as Rayleigh scattering, in which different wavelengths of sunlight are selectively filtered through Earth's atmosphere before hitting the surface of the moon. Shorter, bluer wavelengths are absorbed by the atmosphere while longer, redder ones pass through, turning our moon bloody. (If you think the effect looks cool from Earth, wait until you see what it looks like on the moon.)

Eclipses always come in pairs, with each lunar eclipse falling two weeks before or after a solar eclipse. This year, a lucky few humans (and lots of penguins) had a chance to see a "ring of fire" solar eclipse over Antarctica two weeks ago, on Feb. 17. Here's what it looked like from the French/Italian Concordia research station in Antarctica.

The next total lunar eclipse visible over North America is coming June 26, 2029.

For decades, a debate has raged about whether the moon ever had a strong magnetic field, or if it was always weak. Now, a new analysis of Apollo-era moon rocks suggests the moon's magnetic field might be mostly weak, despite brief outbursts of strong activity — potentially solving the mystery for good.

The research, published Thursday (Feb. 26) in the journal Nature Geoscience, shows that the moon's magnetic field amped up for brief periods in its early history, roughly 3.5 billion to 4 billion years ago, but for most of the moon's 4.5 billion-year-old history, the magnetic field was weak.

"For very short periods of time — no more than 5,000 years, but possibly as short as a few decades — melting of titanium-rich rocks at the moon's core-mantle boundary resulted in the generation of a very strong field," lead author Claire Nichols, an associate professor of the geology of planetary processes at the University of Oxford, said in a statement.

A long debate

The debate about the moon's magnetic field stems from a limited sample of lunar rocks. Six Apollo missions landed on the moon between 1969 and 1972, in zones roughly around the lunar equator. These missions landed in about the same spot, in zones with similar types of rocks, the researchers said.

It was easiest for the astronauts to land their small craft on large, flat basaltic areas called maria, which are old lava plains formed after ancient meteorite crashes that melted the original rock there. These Apollo landing areas are rich in titanium basalts.

The new research charted the amount of titanium content in lunar samples against how strongly magnetized the rocks were. The scientists found that rock samples that were less than 6% titanium had weak magnetic fields and that the magnetic fields were stronger in rocks with higher titanium concentrations.

This suggests the formation of high-titanium rocks and the generation of a strong lunar magnetic field are connected, according to the statement. The researchers think both were caused by the melting of titanium-rich material deep inside the moon, which temporarily generated a very strong magnetic field.

A limited sample

Apollo moon rocks form a substantial part of Earth's lunar inventory. The auction house Christie's suggests that about 1,433 pounds (650 kilograms) of moon rocks on our planet comes from meteorites. Of that inventory, the Apollo archive constitutes roughly 842 pounds (382 kg), according to NASA.

Many of the titanium-rich Apollo rocks nevertheless have been analyzed by scientists, creating the perception that strong magnetism was present on the moon for a long time, according to the Oxford statement. But that appeared strange to other scientists, who argued that the small size of the moon's core — only one-seventh of its radius — could not allow the moon to create a strong field for long periods of its history.

The researchers confirmed the sampling bias by running models, which showed a random set of moon samples analyzed by scientists would have only few rocks containing a strong magnetic field. The hope is that the NASA-led Artemis astronaut missions will land in a larger variety of spots, gathering samples that show a range of the moon's 4.5 billion-year history.

"If we were aliens exploring the Earth, and had landed here just six times, we would probably have a similar sampling bias — especially if we were selecting a flat surface to land on," study co-author Jon Wade, an associate professor of planetary materials at Oxford, said in the statement. "It was only by chance that the Apollo missions focussed so much on the mare region of the moon — if they landed somewhere else, we would likely have concluded that the Moon only ever had a weak magnetic field and missed this important part of early lunar history entirely."

A total lunar eclipse will be visible from parts of North America on March 2-3, but not everyone is guaranteed to see it; daylight or clouds may obscure your view, depending on your location, and the moon’s low position to the horizon during the eclipse may also cause problems.

Thankfully, no matter where on Earth you are, you can still catch the "blood moon" online to savor the 58 minutes of lunar totality, when the moon moves completely into Earth's dark umbral shadow and turns red.

Here's a selection of astronomy organizations around the world that are planning to livestream the spectacular event, often using unique feeds from across the world. It will be the last total lunar eclipse until New Year's Eve 2028 and the last one visible from North America until June 25-26, 2029.

The entire lunar eclipse on March 2-3 — from the point Earth's outer shadow creeps across the moon to the moment it leaves — lasts about 5.5 hours, from 3:44 a.m. to 9:23 a.m. EST Tuesday (March 3), according to Time and Date. With webcasts running on your phone, tablet and/or laptop, you can flip back and forth between shots of the eclipse in various regions of North America, as well as in Australia, New Zealand and East Asia.

Access to webcasts will be particularly important for skywatchers in Europe, Africa and most of Asia — where the eclipse won't be visible at all — or in the eastern time zones in North America. From the Midwest to the West Coast of North America, the totally eclipsed moon will be seen above the western horizon. However, from most of the East Coast, the moon will start to set just as it reaches totality.

Time and Date

One of the most reliable livestreamers of eclipses of all kinds, the Timeanddate.com team will once again be on hand with live feeds from around the world. Presenters Graham Jones and Anne Buckle will host, as always. This time, they will be joined by Preethi Krishnamoorthy and Avinash Surendran, aka the Starry Knights, who will join from Hawaii, with other feeds from Perth Observatory in Australia and the website's mobile observatory near Los Angeles.

Griffith Observatory

Tune in to the livestream from Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles from 12:47 a.m. to 6:25 a.m. PST on March 3, weather permitting. You can learn more about the broadcast on its homepage. Griffith's view will likely be among the finest in North America, perfectly poised to capture the entire event from start to finish, as is anywhere in California. (Note, this is an online-only event, with no on-site public viewing.)

The Virtual Telescope Project

Astrophysicist Gianluca Masi, who founded The Virtual Telescope Project, will curate a broadcast of the live footage from astroimagers streaming live views of the total lunar eclipse across the globe, starting at 3:30 a.m. EST. North American coverage will include livestreams from Florida, Michigan, New Mexico and Montreal, while Australian locations will feature views from Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia.

Skywatchers across western North America will have the chance to witness a total lunar eclipse, often dubbed a "blood moon," in the early morning hours of March 3.

A total lunar eclipse happens when the full moon — in this case, March's full "Worm Moon" — passes through Earth's shadow in space. As it does so, it appears red, as it's lit only by sunlight filtered through Earth's atmosphere.

That "blood moon" moment, called totality, will last 58 minutes, but the entire event is much longer. The more subtle penumbral phase (when the moon enters Earth's outer penumbral shadow) and partial phase (when it begins to move into the dark umbral shadow) will unfold over 5 hours, 39 minutes, according to Time and Date, which estimates that 176 million people will be able to see all phases of the eclipse, though clouds may impede the view.

That encompasses the night side of Earth, which, at the time of the eclipse, will be centered over the Pacific Ocean. That puts Hawaii, Kiribati, Samoa, Tonga and the Cook Islands in pole position, but East Asia, Australia, New Zealand and western North America will also get great views.

In North America, those located west of the Mississippi River will catch the whole show, while observers farther east — including those in cities like New York, Boston and Toronto — will see the moon setting during totality. Early risers along the West Coast and in Hawaii will have a good chance of viewing the entire sequence high in the sky. Clear skies will be essential, making the U.S. Southwest and northwest Mexico the places most likely to see the full event.

Although totality will be the main attraction, it's also worth watching the partial phases that precede and follow totality, when the edge of Earth's shadow can be seen slowly moving across the lunar surface.

The March 3 event will be the first total lunar eclipse since September 2025 and the last until Dec. 31, 2028, when a celebratory "blood moon" on New Year's Eve will kick off a trio of total lunar eclipses, with the next two on June 25-26 and Dec. 20, 2029.

Stargazers in eastern North America will see something truly rare in the night sky this weekend: a very bright star being occulted by the full "Snow Moon."

After turning full Sunday (Feb. 1), the bright moon will move across Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation Leo, briefly making it disappear from the night sky Monday night (Feb. 2). Skywatchers are in for a treat because this rare event, called a lunar occultation, will be visible to the naked eye from large portions of the U.S. and Canada.

It's the latest in a string of lunar occultations of Regulus that began last year and will continue through this year, but it's the first and only of these disappearing acts to be easily visible to observers in North America. The best views will be from the eastern half of North America — from the Midwest to the East Coast, including eastern Canada — a few hours after sunset, as well as from northwest and west Africa.

Observers will see Regulus — the 21st brightest star in the night sky — vanish behind the moon and reappear about an hour later, though your location will determine what you'll see, when, and for how long.

In cities like New York, Toronto and Boston, the event will occur between 8:40 and 10:05 p.m. EST. For example, in New York City, Regulus will disappear at 8:51 p.m. and reappear at 9:54 p.m. EST, according to In-The-Sky.org. The farther west you are, the lower the occultation will appear in the sky earlier in the evening, although this event will not be visible from the western half of North America.

Although this event can be seen with the naked eye, the key moments — the beginning and end of the occultation — will be more impactful with a little magnification, such as a pair of stargazing binoculars or a small telescope trained on the moon. One of the highlights is ingress, when Regulus will sit alongside the bright edge of the moon and be enveloped by it. After being hidden, it will emerge on the other side of the bright moon — a moment called egress.

The next major lunar occultation — an occultation of Venus on June 17 — will occur during daytime hours in North America, so will not be visible. Make sure to watch Regular disappear this weekend for a rare lunar treat.

The second full moon of 2026, February's Snow Moon, will rise Sunday (Feb. 1) alongside one of the most beautiful open star clusters in the night sky.

The moon will be officially full at 5:09 p.m. EST on Feb. 1 and will be best seen at dusk at moonrise where you are. It will be in the constellation Leo, hanging below the Beehive Cluster. The moon will also appear bright and full on Feb. 2.

The best way to see the full moon rise is to find an elevated location or an open space with a clear view of the eastern horizon. Although you can easily view a full moon with the naked eye, a pair of binoculars or a good backyard telescope will reveal the Beehive Cluster's 100-plus stars. Also called M44 and NGC 2632, it's one of the brightest open clusters and, at 577 light-years, one of the closest to the solar system.

You'll find the Beehive Cluster halfway between the bright stars Pollux in the constellation Gemini (to the top right of the moon) and Regulus in the constellation Leo (to the bottom left of the moon). Regulus will be easiest to see about an hour after the moon rises, as will the other stars of Leo.

If you look up on Feb. 2, it will be possible to watch Regulus be occulted (appear to vanish) by the near-full moon for an hour or so as seen from parts of North America — a rare event that won't be repeated until the late 2030s.

February's full moon is also known as the Hungry Moon, Storm Moon and Candles Moon, according to NASA. Per the Old Farmer's Almanac, other names for February's full moon include the Bald Eagle Moon or Eagle Moon (the Cree), Bear Moon (the Ojibwe), Black Bear Moon (the Tlingit), Raccoon Moon (the Dakota), Groundhog Moon (the Algonquin) and Goose Moon (the Haida).

Next comes the new moon, on Tuesday, Feb. 17, which will cause a rare annular solar eclipse — often called a "ring of fire," as just the center of the sun's visible surface is blocked by the moon — seen only from Antarctica.

The next full moon, the Worm Moon, will rise on March 3. This one will be extra special because it will be a total lunar eclipse. During this spectacular event, colloquially called a "blood moon," the lunar surface will turn a reddish-copper color for 58 minutes as seen from North America, the Pacific, Australia and East Asia.

When a full moon peeks just above the horizon, it appears enormous. This is a curious phenomenon, as when it is at this position, the moon is the furthest away from us and so should appear about slightly smaller than when it is at its zenith.

"You actually have to look across the distance of the Earth, so [the moon is] one Earth radius further away than when it's directly overhead," Susanna Kohler, an astronomer and spokesperson for the American Astronomical Society, told Live Science.

So why does the moon look larger when it's on the horizon?

This mystery, dubbed the "moon illusion," has baffled skywatchers for millennia — and to this day, "we don't fully understand how it works," Kohler said. Early explanations, including ideas from Aristotle, blamed the illusion on the magnifying properties of mist or the refraction of light in the atmosphere. However, photographs taken in modern times debunk this theory, showing how refraction instead makes the moon look squished rather than enlarged.

So instead, the moon illusion is probably "something that happens inside the brain" when we construct our perceptions of size, said Bart Borghuis, a neuroscientist at the University of Louisville who wrote a literature thesis on the subject during his undergraduate studies and now researches visual processing.

Researchers have proposed many explanations for how the moon size tricks our brains, Kohler noted. One idea is that when the moon is closer to the horizon, it is held in contrast with the smaller objects, such as trees and buildings, on Earth's surface. However, Kohler added that the moon still appears larger even on a "featureless plane," like the ocean, which suggests there are more factors at play.

The theory backed by the most evidence, and frequently cited in textbooks, focuses on the fallacies of how we often use distance to perceive size. According to Borghuis, size perception is a "two-step process." First, our retinas record the size of the object. And second, we judge its size by accounting for its perceived distance away from us, a visual perception principle known as Emmert's Law.

This principle is at play when it comes to the moon, according to research published in the journal Science in 1962. The study found that when a simulated moon is shown at the end of a horizon, people perceive it to be larger because the terrain makes it seem like it is farther away. In contrast, when a moon is shown without any terrain, where it lacks indicators suggesting visual distance, the augmenting illusion disappears.

This was an observation "that was repeated many times in psychophysics experiments": A filled-in space is perceived to be more extended and longer than an empty space," Borghuis told Live Science.

As a result, "most of us perceive the sky as kind of a flattened bowl," Kohler said, even though the sky is technically a half sphere. This is another way to think about the moon illusion. With a flattened sky, when something is on the horizon, we think it is farther away than if it's overhead, which tricks us into thinking that a same-sized object is larger when it's lower in the sky.

This idea is similar to the basis of the Ponzo illusion, in which the same-sized lines appear to differ in length because they are placed at different perspectives.

You can also see this illusion in action through an at-home experiment. If you stare at a bright object, like a light bulb, for a few seconds and then look at a blank wall, you'll likely see a darker shadow, which should stay the same size no matter what you look at. However, as you switch from looking at a faraway wall to a closer one, you may notice that the size of the spot changes. "It's the most illustrating little test or experiment that you can do," Borghuis said.

These illusions persist even if we know our brain's limits in estimating size. Regardless, "checking out the moon in all of its phases is always a great idea, because it's really cool," Kohler said. "But being able to also look at the cool side of brain science at the same time is neat."

Moon quiz: What do you know about our nearest celestial neighbor?

The moon is quietly absorbing tiny fragments of Earth's atmosphere — and has been doing so for billions of years, a new study reveals. This surprising case of cosmic cannibalism is thanks to supercharged solar winds and, more importantly, our own planet's magnetic field.

The findings upend a 20-year-old theory about how certain charged particles, known as ions, ended up on the lunar surface, and could have big implications for upcoming moon missions, researchers say.

Ever since NASA's Apollo missions first returned lunar samples to Earth in the early 1970s, scientists have been puzzled by traces of volatiles — substances that vaporize at relatively low temperatures, including water, carbon dioxide, helium, argon, and nitrogen — that they found within the moon's soil, or regolith. It soon became clear that some of these substances, particularly nitrogen ions, had originated from Earth's upper atmosphere and were most likely blown onto the moon by gusts of solar wind. (Recent research has also shown that some volatiles on the moon, such as water, may be created directly by the solar wind and have no terrestrial ties.)

Since 2005, the leading theory suggests that this material transfer could have only happened before Earth developed its magnetic field, or magnetosphere, because this invisible forcefield would have likely trapped any atmospheric ions being blown away from our planet.

However, in the new study, published Dec. 11 in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, scientists combined data from the Apollo samples with computer models simulating the evolution of Earth's magnetosphere, and found that the transfer of atmospheric ions was greatest whenever the moon passes through our planet's magnetic tail — the largest section of the magnetosphere that always points away from the sun. (This alignment occurs when Earth gets between the moon and sun, near the full moon phase each month).

The models revealed that, rather than blocking atmospheric ions from being blown from our planet, the magnetic field lines within Earth's tail act as invisible highways for charged particles, guiding them toward the moon, where they are then settled into the lunar regolith.

This means that the transfer of atmospheric ions likely began shortly after the magnetosphere took shape around 3.7 billion years ago — and is likely still occurring today.

Until now, scientists had assumed that the lunar regolith would only contain traces of Earth's earliest atmosphere. However, the new study suggests that these samples could actually act as a time capsule for our atmosphere and magnetosphere.

"By combining data from particles preserved in lunar soil with computational modeling of how solar wind interacts with Earth’s atmosphere, we can trace the history of Earth's atmosphere and its magnetic field," study co-author Eric Blackman, a theoretical astrophysicist and plasma physicist at the University of Rochester, said in a statement.

As a result, regolith collected during upcoming lunar missions — such as NASA's Artemis program, which aims to put boots on the moon by 2028, and China's moon missions, which have already returned lunar samples to Earth — could help researchers fill in gaps in our planet's geological history.

Earth is not the only solar system object to lose tiny bits of itself to the solar wind. Mercury is often seen with a long comet-like tail of dust that is blown off its surface, while the moon also has a tail of ablated sodium ions that Earth repeatedly passes through.

By further studying how Earth loses its atmosphere to the moon, the researchers are hopeful of learning more about how this may have happened elsewhere in our cosmic neighborhood.

"Our study may also have broader implications for understanding early atmospheric escape on planets like Mars, which lacks a global magnetic field today but had one similar to Earth in the past," study lead author Shubhonkar Paramanick, a planetary scientist at the University of Rochester, said in the statement. Future research could help scientists "gain insight into how these processes shape planetary habitability," he added.

The first full moon of 2026, known as the Wolf Moon, appeared on Saturday (Jan. 3), and skywatchers captured it in some amazing shots.

The Wolf Moon's name has both Native American and Anglo-Saxon origins, and likely comes from the belief that hungry wolves are more likely to be heard howling close to the middle of the winter.

This year's January full moon was also a supermoon, meaning it appeared brighter and larger than usual. In fact, there won't be another chance to see a moon as big and bright as this one until November. Photographers across the Northern Hemisphere whipped out their cameras to capture our neighbor in its full glory, and you can see some of the best snaps below.

Moon quiz: What do you know about our nearest celestial neighbor?

When is the next full moon?

June's full moon, nicknamed the Strawberry Moon, rises on Monday, June 29, but it will look bright and full on the nights of June 28 and June 30 as well.

Just like the last two full moons (May's Flower Moon and Blue Moon), June's full moon is a micromoon, meaning it occurs when the moon is near apogee — its farthest point from Earth in its slightly elliptical orbit. As a result, the Strawberry Moon will look around 7% smaller in the sky than an average full moon. It's also the lowest full moon of the year, staying closer to the horizon than most due to Earth's tilt this time of year, just after the summer solstice.

Here's how to photograph the moon when it's at its best.

Full moons of 2026: An overview

In 2026, you'll have the chance to see 13 full moons, including three supermoons and two lunar eclipses (one of which is the last total lunar eclipse until New Year's Eve 2028). Although experienced moon gazers know that the night of the full moon is not the best for observing the lunar surface (even with a good pair of binoculars), the full moon rising as an orb at dusk is a celestial view that's hard to beat.

Full moon guide: When are the full moons of 2026?

Here are all of the full moon dates and times for 2026, according to timeanddate.com, including the most commonly used names in North America:

• Saturday, Jan. 3: Wolf Moon (10:02 UTC/5:02 a.m. EST) — also a supermoon
• Sunday, Feb. 1: Snow Moon (22:09 UTC/5:09 p.m. EST)
• Tuesday, March 3: Worm Moon (11:37 UTC/6:37 a.m. EST) — also a total lunar eclipse
• Wednesday, April 1: Pink Moon (02:11 UTC on April 2/10:11 p.m. EDT on April 1)
• Friday, May 1: Flower Moon (17:23 UTC/1:23 p.m. EDT)
• Sunday, May 31: Blue Moon (08:45 UTC/4:45 a.m. EDT)
• Monday, June 29: Strawberry Moon (23:56 UTC/7:56 p.m. EDT) — also a micromoon
• Wednesday, July 29: Buck Moon (14:35 UTC/10:35 a.m. EDT)
• Friday, Aug. 28: Sturgeon Moon (04:18 UTC/12:18 a.m. EDT) — also a partial lunar eclipse
• Saturday, Sept. 26: Harvest Moon (16:49 UTC/12:49 p.m. EDT)
• Monday, Oct. 26: Hunter's Moon (04:11 UTC/12:11 a.m. EDT)
• Tuesday, Nov. 24: Beaver Moon (14:53 UTC/9:53 a.m. EST) — also a supermoon
• Wednesday, Dec. 23: Cold Moon (01:28 UTC on Dec. 24/8:28 p.m. EST on Dec. 23) — also a supermoon

Lunar eclipses 2026

There will be two lunar eclipses in 2026, but only one will be total. The first, on March 2-3, will be a total lunar eclipse, during which the full Worm Moon will drift through Earth's inner umbral shadow and turn a reddish-orange color for 58 minutes, from 6:04 to 7:02 a.m. EDT on March 3, according to timeanddate.com. The best views of this event, nicknamed a "blood moon," will be from western North America and the Asia Pacific.

The second lunar eclipse, on Aug. 27-28, will be a partial lunar eclipse, during which 96% of the Sturgeon Moon will enter Earth's inner umbral shadow and may take on a reddish-orange hue near maximum eclipse at 12:12 a.m. EDT on Aug. 28, according to timeanddate.com. The best views will be from North and South America, Europe and Africa.

What are the moon's phases?

Scientists typically break the moon's 29.5-day cycle into eight phases, which are determined by the relative positions of the moon, Earth and the sun.

The start of the cycle is the new moon, which is when the moon is exactly between Earth and the sun. We cannot see the moon when it's in the new phase because no sunlight is reflected from its Earth-facing side. A new moon is the only time when a solar eclipse is possible. Two central solar eclipses will occur in 2026: an annular solar eclipse on Feb. 17 and a total solar eclipse on Aug. 12.

As more sunlight hits the moon's Earth-facing side, we say the moon is waxing. The next phase of the moon is called a waxing crescent, followed by the first-quarter phase. Half of the moon's visible surface appears illuminated during the first quarter.

Next comes the waxing gibbous moon, which is partway between a first-quarter moon and a full moon. Halfway through the lunar cycle, the full moon rises, and the moon shines bright and large in the sky. During this phase, the moon and the sun are on opposite sides of Earth, and the entire Earth-facing side of the moon is illuminated.

After the full moon, the waning cycle begins — first with the waning gibbous phase, then a last-quarter moon and, finally, a waning crescent. After almost 30 days, the moon becomes "new" again, and the cycle repeats.

Editor's note: This article is updated monthly. It was last updated on June 25, 2026.

Update (Dec. 5, 10:30 a.m. ET): December's full 'Cold Supermoon' reached peak fullness on Thursday (Dec. 4) just after 6:00 p.m. EST. However, it's not too late to enjoy the highest (and one of the biggest) full moons of the year; the moon will also appear bright and full all night Friday (Dec. 5). Make sure to look up at the year's final supermoon!

Skywatchers are in for a stunning spectacle this week when the second-biggest full moon of 2025, the Cold Supermoon, rises in the east at dusk and appears higher in the night sky than any other full moon of the year.

Officially full at 6:14 p.m. EST on Thursday (Dec. 4), the moon will rise in the east within the constellation Taurus. Although the moon is technically full at a specific moment, it's most visually impressive at the time of moonrise where you are, when it appears largest near the horizon.

It's the third of four "supermoons" in a row, and the second largest of the year after November's Beaver Moon. A supermoon occurs when a full moon coincides with the moon's closest approach to Earth, called perigee. Supermoons appear about 10% larger than average.

Although it will be closest to being full at dusk on Dec. 4, the Cold Moon will also appear bright and full the day before and after, looking particularly impressive on Friday (Dec. 5), when it rises an hour or so after sunset. That's perfect timing for skywatchers who want to try out a new pair of binoculars or a small beginner telescope this holiday season.

December's Cold Moon always climbs higher in the sky than any other full moon of the year. As the winter solstice nears on Dec. 21 in the Northern Hemisphere, the sun appears at its lowest in the sky during the day. In contrast, the full moon — which, by definition, is opposite the sun — rises to its highest at night.

According to The Old Farmer's Almanac, Native American names for December's full moon include the Frost Exploding Trees Moon (Cree), the Moon of the Popping Trees (Oglala), the Moon When the Deer Shed Their Antlers (Dakota), the Winter Maker Moon (Western Abenaki), the Cold Moon (Mohawk) and the Long Night Moon (Mohican). The latter comes from this full moon's closeness to the winter solstice, which occurs on Dec. 21 this year. Old English and Anglo-Saxon names for December's full moon are the Moon Before Yule and the Long Night Moon, according to Time and Date.

The next full moon will be the Wolf Moon on Jan. 3, 2026, the fourth and final supermoon in a row. It will be the first of 13 full moons in 2026, thanks to a Blue Moon — the second full moon in a calendar month — occurring in May 2026.

A strange, lopsided dust cloud shrouds Earth's moon, ever skewed toward whichever side is facing the sun. Now, a new study may finally explain how the asymmetrical cloud got its shape.

Most of the moon's surface is covered by a layer of gray dust and loose rocks. This layer, called regolith, arises because the lunar surface is constantly bombarded by micrometeoroids — tiny space rocks created by asteroid collisions and comets. Without a protective atmosphere — which, in Earth's case, causes micrometeoroids to burn up as "shooting stars" — the moon is struck by several tons of micrometeoroids daily. These impacts, in turn, grind the regolith's rocks to dust.

The micrometeoroids also lift lunar dust. In 2015, researchers found that this rising dust creates a massive cloud that extends several hundred miles above the lunar surface. The cloud isn't very thick, and it's not visible to the naked eye, Sébastien Verkercke, a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre National D'Etudes Spatiales (France's national space agency) in Paris and the new study's first author, told Live Science in an email.

"The maximum density measured was only 0.004 particles per cubic meter (the equivalent to 4 dust grains in a grain silo)," he said. However, the cloud is unusual in being asymmetric, with more dust present over the moon's daytime side (the side facing the sun at any given moment) than its nighttime side. In fact, the cloud is "densest close to the surface near the dawn terminator," Verkercke added, referring to the stark line that separates sunlight from darkness on the moon's surface.

The cloud's discoverers had attributed this lopsidedness to specific meteoroid groups with trajectories that cause the meteoroids to strike the daytime surface more frequently. But the obvious difference between the daytime and nighttime sides of the moon — the temperature — stuck out to Verkercke.

Whereas the moon's surface is often broiling during the day, with temperatures soaring far above that of the hottest place on Earth, the lunar night is four times colder than Antarctica's average temperature. This ginormous temperature swing of up to 545 degrees Fahrenheit (285 degrees Celsius) led Verkercke and his co-authors to wonder if it could be responsible for the cloud's skewed appearance.

To test this hypothesis, Verkercke and his colleagues (researchers from U.S. and European universities) turned to computer models. The team simulated tiny meteoroids — each the width of a human hair — slamming into the lunar dust at two temperatures, 233 degrees Fahrenheit (112 degrees Celsius) and minus 297 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 183 degrees Celsius), corresponding to the moon's average daytime and pre-dawn temperatures, respectively.

"The ejected dust grains are then individually tracked to monitor their distribution in space," Verkercke said. The researchers also repeated the simulations while varying how compactly it was packed.

They found that meteoroids that hit "fluffier" surfaces throw up smaller amounts of dust, because the fluffiness of the surface cushions the impacts. In contrast, meteoroids that strike more compact surfaces yield larger amounts of low-speed dust particles. The researchers think this difference means that the dust clouds can be a marker of how compact the lunar surface is.

Moreover, daytime meteoroids raise 6% to 8% more dust than nighttime ones do. And a larger fraction of those dust particles at high temperatures (relative to those formed at lower temperatures) have enough energy to reach the height of orbiting satellites that can detect them. Both the larger amounts of lofted dust and the bigger fractions of dust reaching the satellites could explain the daytime dust excess, the researchers explained in the study, published Oct. 15 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

The team plans to extend their analysis to other bodies in the solar system that are impacted by small meteoroids. Verkercke noted that one particularly interesting case is Mercury, which has a much hotter temperature than the moon's daytime surface and thus, a larger day-night temperature difference. This, in turn, should create an even more asymmetrical dust cloud.

The researchers hope to virtually replicate this hypothesized observation, which the BepiColombo mission to Mercury will also investigate, Verkercke added.

Skywatchers will see the biggest and brightest full moon of the year tonight. Turning full at 8:19 a.m. ET on Wednesday, Nov. 5, the Beaver Moon is the second of three consecutive supermoons to see out 2025.

The moon will also appear bright and full on Tuesday (Nov. 4) and Thursday (Nov. 6).

The biggest supermoon of the year will be about 221,818 miles (356,980 kilometers) from Earth, the closest of any full moon this year, according to AstroPixels. That makes it the closest full moon since February 2019.

Beaver Moon is the name generally given to November's full moon in North America. It's named after the time of year when nocturnal beavers in the northeastern U.S. and Canada are busy building their winter dams under the light of the full moon, according to Timeanddate. It is also sometimes called the Frost Moon, Snow Moon, Trading Moon, Mourning Moon and Darkest Depths Moon. Anishinaabeg people call November's moon Baashkaakodin Giizis, which means the Freezing Moon, according to the Center for Native American Studies.

This year's Beaver Moon is the second of three supermoons in 2025, following October's Harvest Moon, and with December's Cold Moon also destined to look larger than usual.

A supermoon occurs because the moon's orbit is elliptical, so it sometimes reaches its closest point to Earth — its perigee — during a full moon. The full moon appears about 14% bigger and 30% brighter during perigee than it does at its farthest point from Earth (its apogee), according to NASA. January's Wolf Moon will also be a supermoon.

Although the moon will be officially full on Wednesday, the best views will be had on Thursday, Nov. 6. A full moon typically looks its best as it appears on the eastern horizon during early twilight, soon after sunset. For a supermoon, this is especially the case, because it is the time when it looks very large on the horizon.

To see any full moon — and particularly a supermoon — at its best, it is important to know the exact time of moonrise where you are. Full moons are easily appreciated with the naked eye, but looking at one through a pair of stargazing binoculars or a good backyard telescope can help you spot specific details of the lunar surface, including craters and lunar landing sites.

As viewed on Nov. 6, the moon will appear in the constellation Taurus very close to the Pleiades, an open cluster of stars.

Editor's note: This article was updated on Monday (Nov. 3) with additional information on when and how to view the moon.

On the night of April 19, 1787, astronomer William Herschel noted an hours-long light as bright as the Orion Nebula emanating from the unlit, new moon. He had likely witnessed a "transient lunar phenomenon" (TLP) — a short-term change in the appearance of part of the lunar surface.

TLPs include brightening, reddish or violet blotches and foggy spots. In fact, some 3,000 TLPs have been documented over the past two millennia by people wielding telescopes, cameras or just plain good vision, said Anthony Cook, a research lecturer in physics at Aberystwyth University in the U.K.

But what causes these strange flashes on the moon? While a plethora of physical phenomena can produce TLPs, the duration of a specific TLP, which may range from milliseconds to hours, can hint at its cause, experts told Live Science.

From milliseconds to hours

Superfast flickers — those that last less than a minute — likely occur due to meteoroid strikes, Masahisa Yanagisawa, a professor emeritus at the University of Electro-Communications in Japan, told Live Science in an email. Meteoroids heavier than 0.44 pounds (0.2 kilograms) — about the weight of a billiard ball — produce fleeting flashes of light upon striking the lunar surface. The flashes themselves come from the energy of the impacts that heat rocks on the lunar surface, causing them to glow until they cool.

While such lunar impact flashes (LIFs) were long suspected to be the flickers, scientists couldn't definitively identify them until in the 1990s, when high-speed video cameras became readily available for lunar monitoring, Yanagisawa said. Yet even then, he added, the flashes' short duration meant that factors like electric noise within the cameras couldn't be ruled out.

Confirming a flash, therefore, involved simultaneous observations from two or more distant locations. Despite these constraints, Yanagisawa said, "some flashes were first confirmed during the Leonid meteor shower in November 1999," which he documented in a 2002 study published in the journal Icarus.

Since then, hundreds more LIFs have been formally recorded by projects like the European Space Agency-funded Near-Earth Object Lunar Impacts and Optical Transients (NELIOTA) program. NELIOTA has recorded 193 LIFs over nine years, and a map of these suggests the flashes occur in specific hotspots, like the Oceanus Procellarum, a lunar region that is potentially tectonically active.

However, the project's principal investigator, Alexios Liakos, an associate researcher at the National Observatory of Athens, said this apparent pattern is an observational bias. In fact, a 2024 study he co-authored showed that the moon is pummeled "almost homogeneously by meteoroids," he told Live Science in an email.

In contrast, lunar lights that last minutes may originate in radon gas released from the moon's interior. A pair of studies published in 2008 and 2009 in The Astrophysical Journal suggest that such outgassing occurs when accumulated gas below the moon's surface is explosively released by triggers like "moonquakes." The radioactive radon generates light upon decaying, making it visible from Earth. Plus, spots where longer-lasting lights were observed largely overlap with areas with high concentrations of radon.

But some lights on the moon — like the kind witnessed by Herschel — last hours. Such sightings may be indirectly associated with the moon, according to a 2012 study. The study suggested that the solar wind — the stream of charged particles emanating from the sun — ionizes lunar dust particles, kicking them into enormous clouds 62 miles (100 kilometers) high. These clouds may refract light from stars or other bright objects that appear close to the moon in the sky, ostensibly lighting the lunar surface.

However, some researchers, like Liakos, dispute the existence of long TLPs. "The only longer (and not long) events that I have observed are satellites that cross the lunar disk," Liakos said, adding that he hasn't seen any long-lasting TLPs while observing the moon's night side since 2017.

Still, if you ever see a light on the moon, take note. It could be an illusion of light reflecting off a satellite — but there's a good chance it's a TLP.

Moon quiz: What do you know about our nearest celestial neighbor?

The largest and oldest crater on the moon did not form as we initially suspected, a new study suggests. The findings hint that a specific region of the lunar surface could be more scientifically interesting than we thought — with big implications for NASA's upcoming Artemis missions, which are scheduled to land astronauts within this newly realized area of interest as soon as 2027.

The moon formed around 4.46 billion years ago, when an ancient Mars-size protoplanet, known as Theia, collided with Earth, creating a giant cloud of debris that combined into a large spherical satellite orbiting our planet. For the next 200 million years or so, the lunar surface was covered by a hellish magma ocean, as a result of gravitational squeezing from Earth. But as the moon moved farther away from our planet, the molten rock eventually cooled and crystalized, forming an outer rocky crust that has remained largely unchanged ever since — aside from a near-constant bombardment of space rocks.

Shortly after the moon cooled off, around 4.3 billion years ago, an asteroid more than 10 times wider than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs slammed into what is now the satellite's permanent far side. This birthed the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin, a giant impact crater around 1,550 miles (2,500 kilometers) across and up to 5 miles (8 km) deep. Researchers believe that this extreme impact may have ejected a mix of radioactive material, dubbed "potassium, rare earth elements and phosphorus" or KREEP, that was left over from the past magma ocean. (The chemical symbol for potassium is K, hence the name KREEP.)

KREEP is believed to have formed during the final cooling phase of the moon, when radioactive elements built up in the space between the moon's newly formed mantle and crust. Studying these elements more closely could help shed light on several mysteries surrounding this period of lunar evolution, including why the crust on the moon's far side is thicker than its visible near side.

Until now, researchers believed that the SPA basin was formed by an asteroid impacting the moon from the south, which would have splashed a layer of KREEP around the crater's northern rim. However, in a new study, published Oct. 8 in the journal Nature, researchers found that the impact actually occurred from the north, meaning that the resulting KREEP is plastered around the southern edge of the crater — right where the crewed Artemis III mission is scheduled to land.

"This means that the Artemis missions will be landing on the down-range rim of the basin — the best place to study the largest and oldest impact basin on the moon," study lead author Jeffrey Andrews-Hanna, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona, said in a statement. This is "where most of the ejecta, material from deep within the moon's interior, should be piled up," he added.

The researchers became suspicious of the SPA basin's true origins when they compared its shape to other impact craters in the solar system, including Mars' Hellas basin and Pluto's Sputnik basin. All three craters have a similar shape, with one rounded end and another more pointed, making them look somewhat like an avocado or teardrop. The pointed tip of these craters likely represents the direction of impact, enabling researchers to guess which way the SPA basin asteroid hit.

These suspicions were confirmed when the team analyzed data from the Lunar Prospector, a NASA spacecraft that orbited the moon from 1998 to 1999 and measured the radioactivity of surface elements. This revealed a high concentration of thorium — a radioactive element and key component of KREEP — around the crater's southwestern rim.

Collecting KREEP-y samples

The Artemis III mission, which aims to put humans on the moon for the first time since 1972, is currently scheduled for mid-2027, following the completion of the Artemis II mission, which is due to launch at some point before the end of April 2026. The initial mission will send a crewed spacecraft to orbit the moon, similar to the uncrewed Artemis I spacecraft, which successfully circled the moon in late 2022.

The Artemis III astronauts will land near the moon's south pole in one of nine potential sites, most of which lie inside the KREEP splash zone surrounding SPA, according to NASA. If they land in the right place, this could give the team the chance to collect valuable KREEP samples.

However, there is some uncertainty about when Artemis III will actually launch.

Both Artemis II and Artemis III have already been delayed several times. Historically high cuts proposed to NASA's 2026 budget have also led some experts to predict further delays, which may end up handing China the advantage in the race to return humans to the moon.

China has also already acquired the first samples of the moon's far side, which were returned to Earth in June 2024 by the Chang'e 6 spacecraft, from inside the SPA basin. However, despite sharing the valuable lunar rocks with several other countries, NASA has not yet been allowed to anlayze these samples.

Moon quiz: What do you know about our nearest celestial neighbor?

A full Harvest supermoon shone big and bright last night, with photographers worldwide pointing their cameras to the heavens to capture the event.

The first autumn full moon is dubbed the "Harvest Moon" in some parts of the Northern Hemisphere because its appearance traditionally marked the end of harvest. This year, the Harvest Moon also doubled as a supermoon, which means it appeared larger and brighter than normal.

That's because the moon follows an elliptical orbit around Earth, with a closest point (perigee) and farthest point (apogee) occurring at different times each month. When a full moon rises close to perigee, it becomes a supermoon.

The moon became full just before midnight, at about 11:47 p.m. EST on Monday (Oct. 6). Full moons also appear bright and full on the nights just before and after their peak, so have a look outside tonight for another stunning view of Earth's natural satellite.

Last night was the first of three supermoons scheduled for 2025. To mark the occasion, Live Science has rounded up some of the best Harvest supermoon photos taken last night from around the world.

In Italy, photographer Lorenzo Di Cola captured this stunning shot of the moon rising above Rocca Calascio Castle and Santa Maria della Pietà church in Calascio.

The moon was a supermoon because it was closer to Earth than normal. The distance between us and our planet's natural satellite is about 10% closer than normal during this lunar stage, with the moon hovering about 224,599 miles (361,457 kilometers) away rather than the average distance of 238,855 miles (384,400 km).

Photographer Gongga Laisong captured the moon lit up in the sky over Potala Palace in the autonomous region of Tibet in southwestern China.

While the moon turned full on Monday, it will be at its closest distance to Earth late at night on Wednesday (Oct. 8), the same night we may see shooting stars from the annual Draconid meteor shower.

Photographer Aditya Irawan captured this image of a plane flying in front of the moon as it rose over West Java province in Indonesia.

The Harvest Moon is often in September, but it fell in October this year due to natural variations in the lunar calendar. Typically, "Harvest Moon" is the name given to the full moon that rises closest to the fall equinox, which was on Sept. 22 this year.

In Spain, photographer Marcos del Mazo took this photo of the moon rising over some of Madrid's residential buildings. Whether or not it's a supermoon, the full moon always appears larger when it rises close to foreground objects like buildings or trees. This is a common optical trick known as the moon illusion.

In Indonesia, photographer Yasuyoshi Chiba captured a striking image of the moon lighting up the night sky as it rose above the West Irian Liberation Monument in Jakarta.

Photographer Chi Shiyong captured this satisfying snap of the moon aligned with the top of a bridge in the city of Daqing, in northeastern China.

This shot, captured by photographer Rasid Necati Aslim, shows the moon behind a street light in Manchester, U.K.

The next full moon rises on Nov. 5 (13:21 UTC/8:21 a.m. EST), which will be the second of this year's three supermoons. A November full moon is also known as a "Beaver Moon" because it's the time of year when beavers typically build their dams.

Tonight(Oct. 6) the first supermoon of 2025 will rise big and bright into the autumn sky. Dubbed the Harvest Moon — one of the most famous full moons of the year — it is the first full moon of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere, traditionally used to mark the end of the harvest season.

The moon will officially turn full at 11:47 p.m. EST on Monday (3:47 p.m. UTC on Tuesday, October 7) and will appear bright and full on the nights immediately before and after the peak. Dusk on Tuesday will be the best time to see the full moon appear on the eastern horizon, but it’s also worth looking east at dusk on Sunday (Oct. 5) to see the almost-full moon shine just above Saturn, which is about as close to Earth as it ever gets.

According to Almanac, the Harvest Moon is the name given to the full moon closest to the September equinox, which falls on September 22 this year. Its nickname comes from farming folklore about how the full moon’s light enables farmers to gather crops late into the night, not only on the night of the full moon, but also on the nights surrounding it. While September often hosts the Harvest Moon, the lunar calendar designates October as the host in 2025.

Related: Best telescopes 2025: Explore planets, galaxies and beyond

For the best views of the Harvest Moon on Tuesday, choose an elevated spot with an unobstructed eastern horizon. The moon’s golden-orange glow will be most striking during the 15-20 minutes after local moonrise wherever you are. Your naked eyes are all you need, but a good pair of stargazing binoculars will get you a great view of lunar craters and our natural satellite’s dark lava plains, called mare.

This year’s harvest moon also doubles as a supermoon, appearing slightly larger and brighter than average. The moon will sit just 224,599 miles (361,457 kilometers) from Earth, about 10% closer than usual (238,855 miles, or 384,400 km, according to NASA. A supermoon occurs because the orbit of the moon around Earth is slightly elliptical, so each month there’s a closest point (perigee) and a farthest point (apogee).

A supermoon is the colloquial term for a perigee full moon. This month, the moon is at perigee 1.3 days after it turns full — so the Harvest Moon will actually be at its closest and largest-looking late at night on Wednesday (Oct. 8). That’s also when “shooting stars are possible” as the peak of the annual Draconid meteor shower takes place. While up to 10 meteors per hour are expected, the moon’s brightness may make them harder to spot.

There’s much more to come in October, with two closest approaches to Earth of two comets — Lemmon (C/2025 A6) and SWAN R2 (C/2025 R2) — set to coincide with the peak of the Orionid meteor shower overnight on Oct. 21-22 under the dark skies of a new moon.

The next full moon, the Beaver Moon, will rise on November 5 as the largest supermoon since 2019.

Editor's note: This article was updated at 12:20 p.m. ET on Monday (Oct. 6) to indicate the full moon rises tonight.

One of the best naked-eye stargazing sights of the year is on offer to skywatchers this week — if you can rise before the sun Friday (Sept. 19). Just before sunrise, the crescent moon, the brilliant planet Venus and the bright star Regulus (the brightest star in the constellation Leo) will cluster together on the east-northeast horizon.

There will be barely half a degree between each of the three objects, which is less than the width of a little finger held up against the sky. This triple conjunction of naked-eye objects is a rare sight worth trying to see.

Visible low in the eastern sky about 90 minutes before sunrise, the waning crescent moon will be about 6% illuminated. The slender moon itself will be a gorgeous sight, thanks to the bonus "Earthshine" — the sun's light reflecting off Earth back onto the moon to illuminate its dark side. The dazzling sight will be visible both to the naked eye and in simple stargazing binoculars.

Venus and Regulus will be close by, although their exact locations in the sky will depend on your vantage point. For example, on the east coast of North America, stargazers will see an almost perfect alignment of the crescent moon, Venus and Regulus in a straight line covering barely a degree of sky. On the west coast of North America, it will be more of a close clustering, with a vague triangle formed by the moon, Venus and Regulus.

In terms of brightness, there will be a distinct pecking order. The moon will far outshine everything, followed by dazzling Venus and then Regulus, which will appear faint by comparison. In fact, Venus (magnitude -3.8) will be about 110 times brighter than Regulus (magnitude 1.3). (In astronomy, a low or negative magnitude corresponds to a brighter object.)

Those in northeastern Canada, Greenland, Western Europe and North Africa will see an even closer conjunction, with the moon occulting (moving in front of to block) Venus for a short time. According to In-The-Sky.org, the position of these three objects will vary according to the observer's location because the moon will be so close to Earth that its position in the sky will vary by as much as 2 degrees across the world. It also means that lunar occultations are only visible from part of Earth's surface at any given time.

In the days after the close conjunction, the crescent moon will shrink and become an invisible new moon on Sept. 21, causing a partial solar eclipse that will be visible from New Zealand, Antarctica and the western South Pacific. On Sept. 22, the autumn equinox will bring roughly equal day and night to the entire globe, heralding the arrival of longer nights for stargazing in the Northern Hemisphere. Venus will remain as a bright "Morning Star" for the rest of the month.

Photographers around the world pointed their cameras to the skies last night for a rare "blood moon" total lunar eclipse.

Total lunar eclipses occur when a full moon passes through Earth's darkest, innermost shadow, called the umbra. As only redder-colored light is able to penetrate our planet's atmosphere, the moon is cast in a blood-like hue that's often called a "blood moon". The U.S. was treated to a spectacular "blood moon" in March, but this time it was only visible in Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.

Earth's natural satellite spent about 82 minutes totally covered by our planet's shadow on Sunday night into Monday morning (Sep. 7 to 8) in what was the longest total lunar eclipse since 2022. If you feel like you missed out, Live Science has rounded up some stunning snaps of the event.

In Beijing, China, photographer Sheng Jiapeng snapped a stunning shot of the blood moon rising above the capital's Olympic Park Observation Tower.

During a lunar eclipse, the moon travels behind Earth relative to the position of the sun, making it the opposite of a solar eclipse.

Related: Full moons of 2025: When is the next full moon?

Photographer Nicolas Economou caught the moon partially in shadow above residential buildings in the city of Eindhoven in the Netherlands.

The moon remains visible during a lunar eclipse because some of the sun's light refracts through Earth's atmosphere and hits the moon before reflecting back to the surface of Earth facing the moon.

In Germany, photographer Emmanuele Contini captured the "blood moon" rising behind a spire on Berlin's Oberbaumbruecke bridge.

The moon appears red because particles in Earth's atmosphere are scattering the sun's blue and other short-wavelength light. This leaves the longer-wavelength oranges and reds to pass through and reach the moon.

Photographer Nicolas Koutsokostas took this photo of the "blood moon" beside an air traffic control tower at Athens Airport in Greece.

A lunar eclipse like this only occurs when the moon is perfectly aligned behind our planet, relative to the sun. When the alignment is slightly off, and the sun's light can still directly hit some of the moon, it's a partial eclipse. When the alignment is a little further off, we see a regular full moon reflecting the sun's light back at us — as is the case most months.

The next total lunar eclipse will be on March 3, 2026, according to NASA. The March 2026 "blood moon" will be visible over the Americas, as well as the Pacific Islands, Asia and Australia.

On the night of Sept. 7-8, Australia, Asia, Africa and parts of Europe will get a spectacular view of all phases of a "blood moon" total lunar eclipse.

During the event, which will last about five hours, the full Corn Moon will move through Earth's shadow in space. It will gradually be engulfed by that shadow, taking on a copper-reddish color — hence the name "blood moon" — for 82 minutes, making it the longest total lunar eclipse since 2022.

Unlike a total solar eclipse, which can be seen only from within a narrow path of totality, a total lunar eclipse is visible from anywhere on Earth's night side. Unfortunately for North America, it's on the day side during this eclipse.

Despite that, this will be a highly visible eclipse: The total and partial phases will be observable by 5.8 billion people — about 71% of the world's population. Among the first cities to experience totality will be Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, Australia; Tokyo; and Seoul. The last will include Moscow; Ankara, Turkey; and Bucharest, Romania, with an eclipsed moon seen at moonrise from Western Europe.

Lunar eclipses are visible to the naked eye, and no special equipment is necessary. However, to zoom in on details of the lunar surface and really watch Earth's shadow creep by, a good backyard telescope or a pair of stargazing binoculars will work wonders.

The last time a total lunar eclipse was visible from North America was a 65-minute eclipse on March 14, 2025, and the next one will be a 58-minute event on March 2-3, 2026, according to Time and Date.

Related: How to photograph the moon: Tips on camera gear, settings and composition

The Sept. 7-8 lunar eclipse will last a total of 5 hours, 27 minutes. The event begins at 11:28 a.m. EDT (15:28 UTC) on Sept. 7, with the full moon moving through Earth's outer shadow, the penumbra, during which it will lose much of its brightness. As it begins to enter Earth's darker inner shadow, the umbra, at 12:26 p.m. (16:26 UTC), a curved projection of Earth's shadow will be seen gradually engulfing the moon.

Once the moon is fully inside the umbra, at 1:30 p.m. EDT (17:30 UTC), it will appear copper-red for 82 minutes, until 2:52 p.m. EDT (18:52 UTC). The spectacle will then go into reverse as the moon gradually exits the umbra and then the penumbra, before ending at 4:55 p.m. (20:55 UTC), according to EarthSky.

Livestreams of the total lunar eclipse will be provided from Cyprus by Time and Date and from Italy by The Virtual Telescope Project.

The final full moon of the Northern Hemisphere's summer will occur on Sunday, Sept. 7, and the best time to see it will be later that day as it rises in the east at dusk.

Although it's often called the Harvest Moon, September's full moon is named the Corn Moon this year. That's because the closest full moon to the equinox on Sept. 22 is traditionally called the Harvest Moon, and this year, that's October's full moon (rising Oct 6). This switch-up happens every three years, according to Time and Date.

Other names for September's full moon include the Wine Moon, the Song Moon and the Barley Moon, while Anishinaabeg people call the September moon "Wabaabagaa Giizis," which means the "Changing Leaves Moon," according to the Center for Native American Studies.

Although the moon will be officially full at 2:10 p.m. EDT (18:10 UTC) on Sept. 7, a full moon is best observed as it rises in the east shortly after the sun has set in the west. This month, that happens a few hours after the moon has become full, with the Corn Moon rising a few minutes after sunset across North America.

This year's Corn Moon is also a total lunar eclipse for viewers in some areas of the world. From Australia, Asia, Africa and parts of Europe, a "blood moon" will be visible for 82 minutes — the longest total lunar eclipse since Nov. 8, 2022. It will be almost identical to the total lunar eclipse seen in North America for 65 minutes on March 14, 2025. However, the Sept. 7 eclipse will occur before moonrise in North America.

You can look at the full moon without any optical aids, but if you catch it at moonrise, stargazing binoculars and backyard telescopes can help reveal details on the lunar surface that are not visible to the naked eye. As the full moon rises, its glare increases significantly, making it difficult to view the moon directly.

The following evening, on Monday, Sept. 8, the waning gibbous moon will have Saturn close by. The ringed planet will be particularly bright because it reaches its annual opposition — when it's closest to Earth — on Sept. 20.

After September's Corn Moon, the next full moon will be the Harvest Moon, which will turn full on Monday, Oct. 6.

Humanity's first look at Earth from the moon didn't come until Aug. 23, 1966, when this grainy, black-and-white image showed our planet as a crescent above the lunar horizon, appearing to rise as the camera-toting spacecraft moved in orbit.

At the time, it was a landmark image — and totally unplanned, according to NASA. The first view of Earth from the moon came from NASA's Lunar Orbiter 1, which transmitted the image to a tracking station at Robledo De Chavela near Madrid.

Lunar Orbiter 1, the first U.S. spacecraft to orbit the moon, launched on an Atlas-Agena D rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Aug. 10, 1966, and entered lunar orbit four days later. It was on a cartographic mission, designed to photograph potentially safe landing sites on the moon for NASA's Surveyor and Apollo missions, according to NASA. Although the spacecraft's camera system wasn't highly detailed, it took far more detailed views from lunar orbit than were possible from Earth through even the largest telescopes at the time.

Lunar Orbiter 1's camera, manufactured by Eastman Kodak, featured an automated system that developed exposed film, scanned the images, and transmitted them to Earth. The camera was originally developed by the National Reconnaissance Office and was flown on the Cold War-era Samos spy satellites that were launched by the U.S. in the 1960s, according to NASA.

Lunar Orbiter 1 orbited the moon for 76 days until it deliberately crashed into the moon on Oct. 29, 1966.

Related: James Webb telescope captures one of the deepest-ever views of the universe

Lunar Orbiter 1's camera snapped photographs of nine potential Apollo landing sites and seven backup sites. Earth as a crescent was photographed Aug. 23, 1966, at 16:35 GMT, when the spacecraft was on its 16th orbit, moments before it passed into the darkness of the moon's far side.

Over two years later, on Christmas Eve, 1968, Bill Anders, a lunar module pilot on Apollo 8, the first lunar orbit mission, snapped the iconic "Earthrise" photo. This higher-resolution color image captured humanity's attention as a cultural milestone, but it was Lunar Orbiter 1's very similar photo of Earth as a crescent rising behind the moon, taken over two years earlier, that was the technical first.

For more sublime space images, check out our Space Photo of the Week archives.

This Sunday night (Sept. 7-8), Earth will pass directly between the sun and the full Corn Moon to trigger the year's second and final total lunar eclipse.

Spanning more than five hours, the celestial event will peak with an impressive 82-minute totality phase, when Earth's massive inner shadow will plunge the moon's entire near side into a reddish darkness — earning it the eerie nickname "blood moon."

Sadly, unlike this year's previous blood moon lunar eclipse on March 13-14, viewers in the United States will not be invited to the show. By the time the eclipse begins at 11:28 a.m. EDT (15:28 UTC), the full moon will already have set over North and South America, cutting most of the Western Hemisphere out of the event, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com.

Instead, the eclipse will be best seen from Asia and Western Australia, where more than 6 billion people (nearly 77% of the world's population) will be privy to the entire total phase of the eclipse, according to Time and Date. Skywatchers in most of Europe and Africa will be able to catch at least part of totality, which ends at 20:55 UTC globally, and most of the partial phase that follows it as the moon sneaks back out of Earth's shadow.

How to live stream the lunar eclipse

Skywatchers in North America who want to catch the blood moon in real time aren't totally out of luck, however. A free livestream of the event, courtesy of the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy, has been set for Sept. 7. The stream begins at 1:45 p.m. EDT (17:45 UTC), shortly after moonrise in Italy. The moon will rise partially eclipsed and will reach totality roughly 45 minutes later, according to Time and Date's eclipse map tool.

You can watch the entire stream on the Virtual Telescope Project's official YouTube page or via the video embedded below.

Why do 'blood moon' eclipses happen?

Total lunar eclipses always occur during the full moon, when the moon, Earth and the sun line up in a row. Once perfectly aligned, the innermost and darkest part of Earth's shadow — the umbra — falls across the visible surface of the moon, blotting out the sun's light.

The moon appears red during this phase thanks to a phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering, in which particles in Earth's atmosphere preferentially scatter different wavelengths of light.

As incoming sunlight curves around Earth's perimeter, atmospheric particles scatter shorter-wavelength blue light while allowing longer-wavelength red light to pass through and strike the moon's surface, Live Science previously reported, giving the appearance of a "blood moon."

As is always the case on Earth, a solar eclipse will follow two weeks after its lunar counterpart. On Sept. 21, a partial solar eclipse will be visible from parts of New Zealand, Australia and Antarctica, with up to 80% of the sun's disk blocked by the moon during the peak. Several Pacific islands — including Fiji, Tonga and Samoa — will see a slimmer eclipse, with less than 30% of the sun's disk covered.

Editor's note: This article was updated at 10:45 a.m. EDT on Sept. 5 to include new information about the weekend's total lunar eclipse.

At precisely 2:06 a.m. EDT Saturday (Aug. 23), the moon will enter its new moon phase — something it does every 29.5 days. However, this new moon will have a special title and significance on the calendar. Meet the "black moon."

It's not something that can be seen in the sky, however. A new moon occurs when the moon passes roughly between Earth and the sun, making the surface of the moon invisible from Earth. So why is this particular new moon called a "black moon"?

A black moon is the opposite of a blue moon — and just as rare. As with blue moons, there are two types of black moon. A new moon can get that name if it's the second new moon in a single calendar month. That can happen when there's a new moon on or around the first day or two of a month. It's then guaranteed that a second new moon will occur later that month. This kind — called a monthly black moon — occurs approximately once every 29 months, according to Time and Date. (The next monthly black moon will occur on Aug. 31, 2027.)

However, astronomers also use the term "black moon" to refer to the third new moon in a season of four new moons. That particular calendar quirk is what's happening this weekend — and it's all down to a new moon occurring soon after a solstice or an equinox.

The current season — summer in the Northern Hemisphere and winter in the Southern Hemisphere — began with the solstice on June 20 or 21 (depending on your time zone) and will end with the equinox on Sept. 22. Within that period, there are new moons on June 25 (just four days after the solstice), July 24, Aug. 23 and Sept. 21 (one day before the equinox). It's a tight squeeze, but there's just enough time for four new moons to occur in a single summer.

The third of these new moons (on Aug. 23) is known as a seasonal black moon. This type of new moon occurs once about every 33 months — making it slightly rarer than a monthly black moon.

Related: The 10 best stargazing events of 2025

Although you won't be able to see the black moon with the naked eye, its timing offers a special opportunity for stargazers: a moonless night perfect for enjoying the summer stars just as the Milky Way is looking its best from the Northern Hemisphere.

The best way to get a good look at the arc of our galaxy overhead is to find a location away from light pollution, preferably somewhere with no cities on the southern horizon. Find the three bright stars of the vast Summer Triangle in the southeast — Vega, Deneb and Altair. The Milky Way will be streaming through the left side of the Summer Triangle, roughly from Deneb down to Altair and, from there, down to the southern horizon.

Although the Milky Way is visible in any moonless night sky, the night of the black moon is the perfect opportunity to see it at its best.

On Sept 7, 2025, a dramatic "blood moon" will rise as Earth experiences its second total lunar eclipse of the year.

Skywatchers across Asia and Western Australia will get the best view of the Sept. 7 total lunar eclipse from start to finish, but those in Europe, Africa, eastern Australia and New Zealand may still catch a glimpse of the moon during some of the eclipse phases, including totality.

What time is the lunar eclipse?

Lunar eclipses are global events that happen at the same time for everyone, no matter where you are on Earth. However, whether you see the eclipse depends on whether the moon is above your horizon at that time.

The Sept. 7 lunar eclipse will take place between 15:28 and 20:55 GMT with the moon fully immersed in Earth's dark inner shadow — known as the umbra — for a stunning 82 minutes of totality between 17:30 and 18:52 GMT.

Here's when totality happens in some key cities.

• Perth, Australia: 1:30 to 2:52 a.m. AWST on Monday, Sept. 8, 2025
• Mumbai, India: 11:00 p.m. IST on Sunday, Sept. 7, 2025 to 12:22 a.m. IST on Monday, Sept. 8, 2025
• Cairo: 8:30 to 9:52 p.m. EEST on Sunday, Sept. 7, 2025
• Cape Town, South Africa: 7:30 to 8:52 p.m. SAST on Sunday, Sept. 7, 2025

These are times for totality only — the most dramatic part of the eclipse. But it's worth looking up at least 75 minutes earlier to watch the partial eclipse as Earth's shadow slowly creeps across the moon, and staying after totality to see the moon gradually return to full brightness.

For specific timings for your location, we recommend heading over to Time and Date where you can find detailed viewing information.

Related: Why does the moon turn red during a total lunar eclipse?

Where can I see the lunar eclipse?

Approximately 77% of the world's population, about 6.2 billion people, will be able to see all of the total phase of the lunar eclipse, with almost 88% (7.1 billion people) seeing at least some of the penumbral phase, according to Time and Date.

In Europe, however, the moon will rise already eclipsed, so timing and a clear view of the eastern horizon will be key. Here's when moonrise and totality line up in a few European cities:

In these locations, the moon will already be a deep red when it appears — a haunting sight if you catch it low on the horizon.

What to expect

This eclipse occurs just 2.7 days before the moon reaches perigee (the point in its orbit closest to Earth), so the moon will appear slightly larger than usual, though not enough for most people to notice.

What will be noticeable is how deeply shaded this eclipse is. About 36% of the moon's diameter will pass through the darkest part of Earth's shadow, resulting in a dark, richly colored eclipse. Expect a bold reddish hue as sunlight filters through Earth's atmosphere and bends toward the moon — creating the eerie "blood moon" effect.

If you're in a part of the world where the eclipse will be visible, this is one eclipse you won't want to miss. And if you're not in the viewing zone, don't worry! Space.com will be livestreaming the eclipse, so you can still watch the moon turn blood red in real time. We'll share the full livestream details close to the date.

NASA is accelerating its plans for a nuclear reactor on the moon.

For several years now, the agency has been working to get a 40-kilowatt fission system ready for launch to the moon by the early 2030s. But interim NASA chief Sean Duffy is about to announce a more ambitious path, via a directive set to be released this week, according to Politico.

"The reactor directive orders the agency to solicit industry proposals for a 100-kilowatt nuclear reactor to launch by 2030, a key consideration for astronauts' return to the lunar surface," Politico reported on Monday (Aug. 4).

NASA is working to return astronauts to the moon via its Artemis program, which aims to establish one or more bases on the lunar surface by 2030 or so.

Nuclear power systems are a key part of this vision. Solar isn't a great option for a crewed outpost; because the moon rotates so slowly, nighttime on the moon lasts about two Earth weeks.

China also plans to set up a moon base, in partnership with Russia and a number of other nations. Duffy's coming directive is geared toward beating China to the punch, Politico wrote.

The directive states that the first nation with a moon reactor could "declare a keep-out zone, which would significantly inhibit the United States," according to Politico.

Related: Apollo astronauts discovered the moon is covered in tiny orange glass beads. Now we finally know why.

President Donald Trump tapped Duffy — a former Fox Business Channel host and "Real World: Boston" star who's also the U.S. Secretary of Transportation — to be NASA's interim administrator on July 9.

The appointment came five weeks after Trump withdrew the nomination of his original choice for NASA chief, billionaire entrepreneur and private astronaut Jared Isaacman. That surprise move came just a week or so before Isaacman was set to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

A full moon will rise this weekend — but, unlike most, there will be two opportunities to see it appear on the eastern horizon at dusk.

The Sturgeon Moon will officially reach its full moon phase at 3:55 a.m. ET on Saturday, Aug. 9, which will create opportunities for those in North America to see the full moon rise twice in successive evenings.

The best time to see a full moon rise is just after sunset, typically on the day it officially becomes full. Not only is the full moon 100% illuminated then, but it also appears in the eastern sky when it's just dark enough for the moon to be easily visible while the landscape in front of it is still bathed in the light of dusk.

However, there are occasional months when two successive evenings can deliver similarly impressive full moonrises.

When the full moon occurs during the night, both the evening before and the evening after can offer nearly identical views, but only at certain times of the year. Because the moon orbits Earth every 29 days and there are 24 hours in a day, it rises on average 50 minutes later each day.

However, that's not true in August, when the full moon lies low in the southern sky as seen from mid-northern latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. As it's far south of the celestial equator, the full moon rises at a shallow angle to the horizon and stays in the night sky for a shorter time, causing the time difference between moonrises to shrink to around 30 minutes.

Related: How to photograph the moon: Tips on camera gear, settings and composition

What does this mean for stargazers? On Friday (Aug. 8) in New York City, the full Sturgeon Moon will rise at 8:03 p.m. ET, just a minute after sunset. On Saturday, it will rise at 8:32 p.m. ET, 28 minutes after sunset. Both moonrises will happen during dusk — though do check the exact time of moonrise where you live.

Although the naked eye is fine for observing a full moon, stargazing binoculars and backyard telescopes will help reveal details on the lunar surface.

According to TimeandDate, August's full moon gets its popular name from sturgeon fish that are plentiful in the Great Lakes at this time of year. It's called the Wild Rice Moon by the Anishinaabeg people, according to the Center for Native American Studies, and elsewhere in North America, it is known as the Green Corn and Grain Moon, according to NASA.

August's Sturgeon Moon will be followed by the Corn Moon on Sunday, Sept. 8. From parts of Asia, Australia and the Pacific Ocean, a total lunar eclipse will occur, during which the lunar surface will turn a reddish color for 82 minutes. However, North America will not be on the night side of Earth, so it will see only a regular full moon rise.

A lunar crater immortalized in one of the most famous photographs ever taken has just played a key role in the hunt for alien life in our solar system.

Stretching nearly 25 miles (40 kilometers) across the far side of the moon, the lunar impact crater formerly known as "Pasteur T" may be the most-viewed lunar crater in history. Countless Earthlings have seen it spreading prominently through the foreground of the iconic "Earthrise" photo snapped by American astronaut William Anders on Dec. 24, 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission. The majestic photo, which shows a half-lit Earth rising majestically above the lunar horizon, became so famous that the crater was renamed "Anders' Earthrise" in 2018.

Now, nearly 60 years after Anders' flyby put his eponymous crater on the map, another spacecraft has glimpsed it from orbit — this time, with extraterrestrial science in mind.

The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) spacecraft, which launched from Earth in April 2023 and is expected to reach Jupiter's orbit in 2031, flew past the moon nearly a year ago. Mission scientists used this encounter to test the spacecraft's 10 science instruments, which will eventually be used to hunt for signs of habitability on the many moons of Jupiter.

This lunar flyby presented the first opportunity to test the performance of JUICE's instruments on a solid surface in space, representatives from the European Space Agency (ESA) said in a statement. Of particular importance was the Radar for Icy Moon Exploration (RIME) instrument, which uses radio wave echoes to measure elevation on rocky bodies.

"RIME's task at Jupiter is to peer below the icy surfaces of moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto to map the invisible rocky layers below," ESA representatives wrote in the statement.

Related: 32 strange places scientists are looking for aliens

Because RIME needs to "listen" for precise changes in radio waves, the instrument requires as much silence as possible to get the best readings. That's where Anders' Earthrise crater comes into play. While JUICE sailed past the famous crater, ESA scientists silenced all of the probe's other instruments to let RIME observe it in peace for eight uninterrupted minutes.

RIME's radar mapped the moon's elevation in and around the crater, which researchers compared to earlier measurements taken by other spacecraft, such as NASA's Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA). The team found that electronic noise within JUICE was throwing off RIME's measurements — kicking off a months-long project to correct the issue with a new algorithm.

ESA now reports that this project was a success. The new elevation map of Anders' Earthrise crater (above) shows peaks and valleys that perfectly match the elevations captured by LOLA during earlier lunar flybys. The data prove that RIME is ready for its big job: charting the subsurface depths of the largest moons in the solar system — and, hopefully, aiding in the search for extraterrestrial life.

With a long journey still ahead, JUICE is now headed toward Venus, where our neighboring planet's gravity will give the spacecraft a boost on the path to Jupiter. Ultimately, JUICE will complete 35 flybys of Jupiter's most massive moons, before settling into orbit around Ganymede from December 2034 to September 2035, according to ESA. Studying Jupiter and its moons will not only provide new insights about the formation of gas giants and planetary systems at large but also help to tease out signs of life and habitability beneath the icy shells of the enormous moons.

​​Blue moons, blood moons and honey moons have all worked their way into fiction and folklore, but the changing hue of our planet's biggest satellite remains rooted in science. The moon doesn't produce any of its own light, instead reflecting white light from the sun. So what color is moonlight and why does it sometimes transform into different colors, at least from Earth's perspective?

The answer has to do with how much of this reflected light reaches us on Earth. Samples taken from the moon reveal it to be principally a light-gray rock called anorthosite, with some darker areas of basalt, said Christine Shupla, science engagement manager at the Lunar and Planetary Institute.

"The gray rock is an equal-opportunity energy absorber," she told Live Science — it takes a tiny bit from every part of the spectrum but, broadly speaking, reflects white light down to Earth, giving the moon its typical grayish-white appearance.

However, various atmospheric and astronomical phenomena can restrict the wavelengths that reach us. "Light scattering processes in the Earth's atmosphere are key to how we perceive the colour of the moon," explained Evelyn Hesse, an atmospheric optics researcher at the University of Hertfordshire in the U.K.

From a position high in the sky, moonlight has a relatively short path through the atmosphere, so this scattering effect is negligible and all the reflected light reaches the surface. But closer to the horizon, the moonlight must pass through the atmosphere at an angle, creating a longer path and allowing molecules of oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere to interact with the incoming light.

Moonlight initially contains a mixture of visible wavelengths between 380 nanometers (violet to human eyes) and 750 nanometers (red), but each of these will be scattered to a different extent by the particles in the atmosphere. In the case of atmospheric gases, blue light is scattered most strongly — a process known as Rayleigh scattering. This phenomenon makes the moon appear orange when it's low in the horizon. As the light takes a longer path through the atmosphere from this position, only these orange wavelengths reach the surface.

Related: Will Earth ever lose its moon?

This effect is exaggerated for a blood moon or lunar eclipse, Shupla said. "During a lunar eclipse, the Earth's shadow is covering the moon, so the only light that is reflected is the light that is bouncing through our atmosphere to the moon," she explained. "All the blue light is getting absorbed by the atmosphere, and what's left over are the oranges and reds."

But it's not just nitrogen and oxygen changing the composition of moonlight. High clouds, pollution and dust can all influence the moon's appearance, scattering different parts of the visible spectrum depending on the size of the particles.

"After volcanic eruptions, the air contains large amounts of ash particles (about 1 micron in size) which preferably scatter red light, [so] the moon might appear blue since only this component of the visible spectrum reaches the observer," Hesse told Live Science in an email. "In an analogous way, smoke from wildfires might scatter the blue light out of the moonlight beam, making the moon appear red due to the remaining part of the solar spectrum."

However, the popular definition of a blue moon is when there are two full moons within a calendar month. Another definition, dating to 1528, describes a blue moon as the third full moon in a season that has four full moons. Neither of the definitions, however, are connected to the moon's true color; most of these blue moons will actually appear whitish.

Moonlight can also appear as other colors. Full moons during June can often look honey-colored, giving rise to the name honey moon, Shupla said. The traditional wedding holiday, which many people choose to take in June and July, probably takes its name from this phenomenon, she added.

Even more striking, when the path of moonlight is diverted — known as refraction — it can create some extraordinary colors as the individual wavelengths begin to separate. "At very specific conditions, when the moon is close to the horizon, one can observe the lunar green flash," Hesse said. "This is when the moon's light undergoes atmospheric refraction, resulting in different wavelengths taking slightly different paths. But this will only last for a few seconds."

This same dispersion effect is likewise responsible for a rare rainbow halo on the moon. "If there are ice crystals high in the atmosphere, light from the moon can bounce off of those crystals and refract the same way it does in raindrops and it makes a little rainbow around the moon," Shupla said.

So what color is moonlight? Light reaching the moon is certainly whitish, but optical interactions can transform its appearance, making it difficult to assign moonlight a definitive color. "I would say it's ephemeral!" Shupla said.

Moon quiz: What do you know about our nearest celestial neighbor?

The first full moon of astronomical summer in the Northern Hemisphere is about to rise. Known as the Buck Moon, it will turn full Thursday, July 10 and will be one of the lowest-hanging full moons of the year.

Although the moon officially reaches its full phase at 4:38 p.m. EDT on June 10, that moment occurs while the moon is still below the horizon for viewers in North America. The best time to see the full Buck Moon will be at moonrise, at dusk, on Thursday evening, when the moon will appear on the eastern horizon as an orange orb. Use a moon calculator to determine the exact time you should look for the moon from your location.

The Buck Moon will be in Sagittarius, one of the most famous summer constellations in the Northern Hemisphere. However, this zodiacal constellation lacks bright stars, so don't expect to see any close to the full moon.

July's full moon is one of the lowest of the year, second only to June 11's Strawberry Moon, because it occurs relatively early in the month. By definition, a full moon is opposite the sun in the sky, so it mirrors its position. When the sun is highest in the sky — as it was at the summer solstice on June 20 — the moon is at its lowest. The Buck Moon will, therefore, mirror the sun's low winter arc, rising during dusk in the southeastern sky, drifting across the southern sky without getting too far above the southern horizon, and then setting in the southwest at dawn. (This phenomenon works both ways, with the full moon closest to the December solstice being the highest of the year.)

Related: How to photograph the moon: Tips on camera gear, settings and composition

The Buck Moon's proximity to the horizon throughout the night will enhance its apparent size and color, making it appear larger than usual. The "moon illusion" is the name for this trick our brains play on us, according to NASA.

The Buck Moon will also be the farthest full moon from the sun because Earth's orbit of the sun is slightly elliptical. On July 3, Earth was at aphelion, its farthest point from the sun on its orbital path. Since the next full moon is on the side of Earth facing away from the sun, it is the farthest full moon of the year.

The Buck Moon is named for new-growth antlers on male deer that emerge in July in North America, according to Timeanddate.com. Other Native American names for this month's full moon include the Salmon Moon, Raspberry Moon and Thunder Moon. An English name for July's full moon is the Hay Moon, for its closeness to the midsummer harvest, while Celtic names for it include the Claiming Moon, Wyrt Moon, Herb Moon and Mead Moon.

The next full moon, the Sturgeon Moon, will rise on Saturday, Aug. 9.

When Apollo astronauts first set foot on the lunar surface, they expected to find grey rocks and dust. What they didn't anticipate was discovering something that looked almost magical: tiny, brilliant orange glass beads scattered across the Moon's landscape like microscopic gems. These beads, each smaller than a grain of sand, are actually ancient time capsules from when the Moon was volcanically active billions of years ago. The beads formed some 3.3 to 3.6 billion years ago during volcanic eruptions on the surface of the then, young satellite.

The story of these glass beads begins with explosive volcanic activity that would have been spectacular to witness. The beads formed when lunar volcanoes shot material from the interior to the surface, where each drop of lava solidified instantly in the cold vacuum that surrounds the moon. Picture volcanic eruptions similar to Hawaii's famous lava fountains, but happening in the airless environment of space.

Without an atmosphere to slow them down or weather to erode them, these tiny glass spheres have remained pristine for over three billion years. For fifty years, these samples sat in laboratories waiting for technology to catch up with scientific curiosity.

Now, researchers have finally been able to peer inside the beads using advanced microscopic techniques that didn't exist during the Apollo era. The research team used multiple cutting edge tools including high energy ion beams and electron microscopy to analyse the beads without damaging them. They had to be extremely careful to protect the samples from Earth's atmosphere, which could alter the ancient minerals on their surfaces.

What makes these beads so scientifically valuable is that they come in different colours and compositions, telling different chapters of the Moon's volcanic story. Some beads are shiny orange, others are glossy black, and each variety reveals information about different types of eruptions that occurred over millions of years.

The minerals and isotopic composition of the bead surfaces serve as probes into the different pressure, temperature and chemical environment of lunar eruptions 3.5 billion years ago. Scientists discovered that the style of volcanic activity changed over time, providing insights into how the Moon's interior evolved.

As Ogliore poetically described it, analyzing these beads is "like reading the journal of an ancient lunar volcanologist." Each tiny sphere contains clues about conditions deep inside the Moon during an era when our solar system was still young and dynamic.

These glass beads remind us that the Moon wasn't always the quiet, inactive world we see today. Billions of years ago, it was a geologically active place with explosive volcanoes creating these beautiful, microscopic windows into lunar history that continue to reveal their secrets to modern science.

The original version of this article was published on Universe Today.

A "Strawberry Moon" rose over Earth last night, when a phenomenon known as a 'major lunar standstill' caused the full moon to hang lower in the sky than it had done in almost two decades.

June's full moon is called the Strawberry Moon because wild strawberries ripen this time of year in parts of the Northern Hemisphere. The full moon hangs lower in June than at any other time of the year. However, this year's Strawberry Moon was particularly low because of the major lunar standstill, or lunistice.

A major lunar standstill is when the tilts of the Earth and moon are at their maximums, causing the moon to periodically rise and set at extreme positions on the horizon due to the shifting tilt of its orbit. Last night, the major lunar standstill brought the moon to its most southerly position on the eastern horizon. The last time the moon was this low was in 2006.

The extra-low Strawberry Moon was visible from Tuesday night into Wednesday morning (June 10 to 11), with skywatchers worldwide lifting their cameras to mark the event. Live Science has rounded up some stunning snaps of the rare lunar event.

Related: Watch: Spacecraft films 'diamond ring' solar eclipse from the surface of the moon as 'blood moon' looms over Earth

This image shows the full moon rising over the Torre del Serpe in Otranto, Italy. While the June full moon is named after strawberries, it doesn't necessarily appear as a different color, like it does during a "blood moon," when Earth's natural satellite takes on a blood-like hue. However, Strawberry Moons typically have a bit of color because they're so close to the horizon.

The Strawberry Moon often takes on a yellow-orange tint when it's low in the sky, as Earth's atmosphere scatters shorter, bluer light wavelengths, enabling redder ones to dominate. In New York, photographer Gary Hershorn captured the Strawberry Moon looking particularly orange as it passed by the tip of the Empire State Building.

Skywatchers around the world looked up last night to see the Strawberry Moon. In Ankara, Turkey, a photographer snapped a photo of people holding hands as they observed the rare lunar event.

In Iraq, a photographer took a stunning image of a violinist playing as the full Strawberry Moon rose behind him on the horizon.

In Uruguay, a photographer captured the moon hanging over the Centenario Stadium in the country's capital city of Montevideo. The photo was taken before a soccer game between Uruguay and Venezuela.

Why is it called the Strawberry Moon?

The Strawberry Moon’s name came from the Algonquin tribes of the northeastern U.S.. Other Native American names for the moon include the Berries Ripen Moon, Green Corn Moon, Hot Moon and Blooming Moon.

This Strawberry Moon fell in the second year of the major lunar standstill, which happens every 18.6 years and lasts for two years each time. The last major lunar standstill was in 2006, and the next one will be in 2043.

Moon quiz: What do you know about our nearest celestial neighbor?

Stargazers, get ready for some low-hanging fruit: The full Strawberry Moon is about to rise!

In addition to being the final full moon of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, June's Strawberry Moon will be the lowest full moon of the year as seen from north of the equator, as well as one of the farthest from the sun.

The moon will become full at 3:45 a.m. EDT Wednesday (June 11), but because that's so early in the day, the best time to see it will be Tuesday (June 10) evening, when it rises during dusk. As you watch the moon appear, look to its upper right to spot Antares, a bright star 550 light-years away, in the constellation Scorpius.

June's full moon is always one of the lowest-hanging of the year, as seen from the Northern Hemisphere. That's because a full moon is, by definition, opposite the sun, so it mirrors our star's position in the sky. Because the summer solstice occurs on the night of June 20 (or June 21 GMT), when the sun is as high in the sky as it can get, the closest full moon is the lowest of the year. That means it will rise during dusk in the southeastern sky; drift across the southern sky, never getting too far above the southern horizon; and set in the southwest at dawn.

The Strawberry Moon is one of the farthest full moons from the sun simply because Earth's orbit of the sun is slightly elliptical. That means there's a closest point and a farthest point in its orbit. The farthest point, called aphelion, occurs on July 3 this year. Because a full moon is opposite the sun, this is when the moon is at its farthest from the sun all year.

Why is it called the 'Strawberry Moon'?

The Strawberry Moon is named for the wild strawberries that ripen in some areas of the Northern Hemisphere this month, according to Timeanddate.com. Other Native American names for this month's full moon include the Berries Ripen Moon, Green Corn Moon, Hot Moon and Blooming Moon. English names include the Flower Moon, Planting Moon and Mead Moon, while some Celtic names for it are the Horse Moon, Dyan Moon and Rose Moon.

Editor's note: This article was corrected at 10:00 a.m. ET on June 5 to remove mention of the moon's approximate distance from the sun. Because the moon is always moving, this is a difficult number to pinpoint.

The moon is our constant companion and the only natural object that always orbits Earth. It's about four times smaller than Earth and its gravity is much weaker, which is why astronauts bounce around on it like a trampoline. But even though our moon is relatively small, it still has a big effect on our planet. The moon is why our oceans have tides, and it may even help stabilize Earth's tilt and rotation, keeping the lengths of our days and seasons the same. Read on to learn more fascinating facts about the moon.

5 fast facts about the moon

• The moon's orbit isn't a perfect circle. Instead, it's more stretched out, kind of like an oval, which means its distance from Earth varies by about 30,000 miles (48,000 km).
• The surface of the moon is rusting. It's turning redder as Earth's atmosphere interacts with iron in the soil.
• NASA has spotted water on the moon.
• The same side of the moon always faces Earth.
• Scientists have grown plants in moon dirt from the Apollo missions.

Everything you need to know about the moon

Moon pictures

Discover more about the moon

• Will Earth ever lose its moon?
• Why can't we see the far side of the moon?
• Why can we sometimes see the moon in the daytime?

Precious moon samples brought back to Earth by China's Chang'e 5 mission in 2020 have finally been shared with international researchers — but the law has made it difficult for U.S.-based scientists to receive any of the material.

Earlier in May, British planetary scientist Mahesh Anand of the Open University in Milton Keynes travelled to China to "borrow" 60 milligrams (0.002 ounces) of the 1,731-gram (3.8 pounds) Chang'e 5 sample. Scientists from elsewhere in Europe, as well as Ethiopia, Russia and the United States, are also receiving samples.

In the other countries, government funding bodies are paying for the analysis of these loaned samples, but NASA is prevented from funding U.S.-based researchers to do the same. Instead, Timothy Glotch, the lone American planetary scientist who has received a sample of the Chang'e 5 material, had to be funded privately by his own institution, Stony Brook University in New York.

That's because of a law passed in 2011 called the Wolf Amendment. Named after Frank Wolf, the Republican senator who pushed for it, it was inserted as an amendment into the 2011 federal budget and bars bilateral cooperation between NASA (and the scientists the agency funds) and the China National Space Administration (CNSA) and Chinese scientists. The aim is to prevent Chinese government scientists from gaining knowledge of American space technologies that the U.S. government fears could then be used militarily by China against the United States.

The Wolf Amendment seems counter to the old way of doing things. Science has often been a bridge between opposing countries. During the Cold War, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) was a project that U.S. and Soviet scientists worked together on, including a famous conference held in the USSR in 1971. Another example was the Apollo–Soyuz rendezvous in 1975, when astronauts and cosmonauts shook hands in space. The Wolf Amendment, however, prevents similar space-science cooperation taking place between the U.S. and Chinese governments without the prior approval of Congress.

And, it seems, the Wolf Amendment works both ways, preventing NASA from receiving or funding research into the Chinese moon samples.

Luckily for Glotch, this has not stopped China from sharing a sample with him and his research group, which includes scientists at San Francisco State University and the University of Hong Kong, as long as they are funded privately. Allowing American researchers access to the Chang'e 5 samples is important, because it allows them to make direct comparisons between Apollo-era lunar samples and the Chang'e 5 samples in the same lab.

Glotch plans to test the thermal properties of his "loaned" sample by heating it (we say loaned, but the analysis will likely destroy the sample), and then comparing it to thermal maps of the moon to provide a greater understanding of the composition of different lunar regions based on how they heat up and cool down in sunlight, relative to the Chang'e 5 sample.

The Chang'e 5 sample was obtained by the Chinese spacecraft from Mons Rümker, which is an ancient volcanic region in the giant Oceanus Procellarum ("Ocean of Storms"). By making direct comparisons between the Apollo samples, which were taken from various locations on the moon, and the Chang'e 5 sample, Glotch's group hopes to gain greater insights into the volcanism that created the samples in the first place.

Chinese scientists have already discovered that the basaltic material in the Chang'e 5 sample is substantially younger than the volcanic samples collected by Apollo, by billions of years. This tells us that the moon was volcanically active for much longer than scientists had realized — perhaps as recently as 120 million years ago.

Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, Anand's team will heat some of their 60 milligram sample to 2,550 degrees Fahrenheit (1,400 degrees Celsius) to extract noble gases such as argon and krypton, as well as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, to provide more data about the history of those elements in the solar system.

This article was originally published on Space.com

Moon quiz: What do you know about our nearest celestial neighbor?

The moon spent a few million years as a volcanic wasteland, covered with ongoing eruptions that spewed from mountains and even from the ground itself. New research suggests that the moon's orbit could have turned it into a molten monster for a few tens of millions of years. The result may have been comparable to Jupiter's moon Io, the most volcanic body in the solar system.

Early in the history of the solar system, a massive protoplanet plowed into a young Earth. The colliding material intermixed, then reformed into two separate bodies that would become Earth and the moon. The two orbited almost on top of one another, but over time, the moon slowly drifted away, solidifying as it went.

Eventually, the sun's gravity exerted a stronger pull on the moon. Although it was farther away than the sun, the two bodies tugged on the moon equally.

"The moon gets sort of confused," planetary scientist Francis Nimmo, of the University of California, Santa Cruz, told Space.com. "It doesn't know exactly what orbit it should be adopting, and so it can develop kind of a weird orbit." Nimmo presented the results of his study in March at the 56th annual Lunar and Planetary Sciences Conference.

The resulting gravitational mishmash churns up the lunar interior, melting rock to create a magma layer that erupts to the surface.

The new research suggests that the lunar surface may have been reset by the lava flows roughly 4.35 billion years ago. The lava flows would have filled in any existing craters and helped to reset the ages measured by moon rocks and lunar zircons.

Related: Is the moon still geologically active? Evidence says it's possible

Old versus young moon

Figuring out when the moon formed presents its own challenges. There are a number of methods, from studying samples returned to Earth to examining zircons within those rocks to trying to figure out how the planets and their satellites danced billions of years ago. But those methods can all give conflicting answers.

Probing the age of moon rocks was one of the first ways scientists attempted to calibrate the age of the moon. Samples brought back from NASA's Apollo progam were studied and measured. Today, new samples continue to come in, now from China's ongoing series of Chang'e program. These provide new objects to study and test.

A second line of evidence for the lunar age comes from zircons within the rocks themselves. Zircons are silicate minerals found inside of rocks on both Earth and moon and are some of the oldest objects in the solar system. While rocks can melt and reform, the zircons themselves are tough enough to resist melting at all but the highest temperatures.

"Zircons are very tough," Nimmo said. "It takes a lot to destroy a zircon once it's formed." Melting the lunar surface through extensive volcanism is one way to reset the zircons.

Both methods of dating can be a challenge. Zircons are more precise but require incredibly precise measurements, which is why scientists have only been able to examine them over the last two decades or so. Moon rocks, on the other hand, can be more complicated to interpret, and have been providing a variety of ages. Together, the two processes suggest the moon is about 4.35 billion years old.

Scientists also rely on insights from dynamical models. Studies of Earth show that it collected a lot of iron-loving metals after it had already formed an iron core. Those metals settled in the mantle, making up roughly a half of a percent of Earth's mass after core formation was completed, and are referred to as the Late Veneer. But those metals had to be absorbed while material was still flying around in the chaotic, cluttered early solar system — and 4.35 billion years ago, that material was already gone.

With the new results, published in the journal Nature at the end of last year, Nimmo and his colleagues are suggesting that a 4.5-billion-year-old moon would fit into measurements of younger lunar rocks. When the moon suffered from a tug-of-war between Earth and the sun, the melting would have caused lunar rocks and zircons to melt and reform, providing a younger age that doesn't necessarily reflect when the moon itself was born.

A lunar Io

For a few tens of millions of years, volcanism would have covered the moon. But it wouldn't necessarily have been expressed as massive spewing mountains. On Earth, volcanic material is rich in silicate, which thickens the lava and allows it to pile up into massive mountains. On the moon, the lava was likely thinner, seeping through the crust and out to the side rather than piling up on itself.

"There was certainly lots of volcanism, it just didn't really produce volcanoes that we're familiar with," Nimmo said.

The constant seepage may have inhibited the formation of a magma ocean layer because the newly formed liquid wouldn't remain stuck in the mantle. As the material melted and became buoyant, it would have oozed upward to the crust. Some of it would have broken through, but some of it may have simply filled in the crust, creating outward buckles like those seen on Earth.

At the time, the Earth would have been far closer to the moon than it is today, making it perhaps twice as large in the lunar sky as it is today. "You would see glowing lava flows all over the place, and maybe the odd volcanic eruption," Nimmo said.

The Io-like state would have only lasted maybe a few tens of millions of years, according to Nimmo.

"This was kind of a brief but very energetic event," he said.

Originally posted on Space.com.

Russia has signed a deal with China to build a nuclear power plant on the moon.

The Russian reactor will be used to power the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), jointly led by China and Russia, and should be completed by 2036, according to a memorandum of cooperation signed by the two nations.

The announcement comes just after NASA revealed a 2026 budget proposal that would axe the agency's plans for an orbital lunar base.

The construction of the Chinese-Russian reactor will likely be carried out autonomously "without the presence of humans," according to a 2024 interview with Yury Borisov, director general of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, on the Russian state-owned news site TASS. While details of how this can be achieved remain unclear, Borisov added that the technological steps are "almost ready."

"The station will conduct fundamental space research and test technology for long-term uncrewed operations of the ILRS, with the prospect of a human being's presence on the Moon," Roscosmos wrote in a May 8 announcement following the signing of the memorandum.

The new research station, a permanent, manned lunar base located on the moon's south pole, has so far attracted 17 countries to join the program — including Egypt, Pakistan, Venezuela, Thailand and South Africa. Its groundwork will be laid by China's 2028 Chang'e-8 mission, which will be the nation's first time landing an astronaut on the lunar surface.

Related: Russia and China announce plan to build shared nuclear reactor on the moon by 2035, 'without humans'

The roadmap for the ILRS was first unveiled in June 2021, with China and Russia announcing they would loft the pieces for a robotic moon base using five super heavy-lift rocket launches from 2030 to 2035.

Once these basic pieces are established, China plans additional launches that will extend the base further, connecting it to a space station orbiting the moon and two nodes located at the moon's equator and its far side, Wu Yanhua, the chief designer of China's deep exploration project, said at a 2024 media conference, according to state media outlet Xinhua.

This extended model, laying the foundations for manned landings on Mars, should be completed by 2050. It "will be powered by solar, radioisotope and nuclear generators," Wu said. "It will also include lunar-Earth and high-speed lunar surface communication networks, as well as lunar vehicles like a hopper, an unmanned long-range vehicle, and pressurized and unpressurized manned rovers."

The memorandum comes at a time of growing ambition for China's space programs. The country has had a lunar presence since the 2013 landing of the Chang'e 3 mission, which placed a rover on the moon. Subsequent missions landed more rovers on the moon and Mars, while collecting samples from the moon's near and far sides, and mapped out the lunar surface.

China's race to build a lunar outpost also has an American rival in the Artemis program, which has recently been beset by delays. Artemis III, which will see NASA astronauts return to our nearest natural satellite for the first time in over 50 years, is expected to launch sometime in 2027.

Meanwhile, the future of NASA's own planned lunar space station, dubbed Gateway and initially slated for launch as soon as 2027, has been thrown into question with the release of the Trump administration's proposed 2026 budget. The budget calls for canceling the Gateway mission, despite significant progress on building the station's modules.

Tonight (Monday, May 12), May's full moon, known as the Flower Moon, will appear in the east during dusk, will shine all night, and will set in the west as dawn appears. The moon will also appear bright and full on Tuesday (May 13).

However, the next full moon may look a tiny bit smaller than average. That's because it will be a "micromoon," the opposite of a "supermoon."

The technical term for a "micromoon" is an apogee full moon.

Related: Full moons of 2025: When is the next full moon?

An apogee full moon occurs because our planet's satellite orbits Earth along a slightly elliptical path, creating points when the moon is either closest to Earth (perigee) or farthest (apogee). The latter point this month almost coincides with a full moon. On Monday, our natural satellite will be 251,828 miles (405,278 kilometers) away instead of the average 238,855 miles (384,400 km), according to AstroPixels.

The moon will officially be 100% full at 12:56 p.m. EDT, when the sun is still bright overheard, but will be best observed during dusk later that day. To best view our celestial companion, check the moonrise and moonset times for your location and be in a place with a low view of the eastern horizon. The full moon will appear large on the horizon thanks to the moon illusion — a trick of visual perception that scientists don't fully understand. As the moon rises or falls, it will also look orange because of Rayleigh scattering.

Related: Best binoculars for stargazing

May's full moon, named for the flowers that bloom in spring, has plenty of other names. The Anishinaabe, or Ojibwe, of the Great Lakes region call it the Sucker Moon, according to the Center for Native American Studies.

Meanwhile, the Anglo-Saxon name, the Milk Moon, comes from the fact that people tend to milk cows three times a day in May, according to Timeanddate.com. Other names include Mothers' Moon, Bright Moon, Hare Moon and Grass Moon.

The next full moon will be the Strawberry Moon, which appears on Wednesday, June 11, though it will be best seen as it rises during dusk on Tuesday, July 10. It will be the final full moon of spring in the Northern Hemisphere and fall in the Southern Hemisphere, occurring just 11 days before the summer solstice on Saturday, June 21.

Editor's note: This article was updated on May 12 to indicate the full moon rises tonight.

Moon quiz: What do you know about our nearest celestial neighbor?

On Saturday, April 12, look east at dusk to see the next full moon rise into the sky: the "Pink Moon".

April's full moon — the first of spring in the Northern Hemisphere — occurs as Earth gets between the sun and moon. Our natural satellite will be 100% illuminated at 8:22 p.m. EDT on April 12, rising in the east during dusk, shining all night before setting in the west at dawn. If you miss that event, the moon will also appear bright and full on Friday and Sunday.

Although you may think it's fine to just look at any phase of the moon at any time of night, a full moon is too bright once it's high in the sky to observe comfortably. By far the best time to see it is as it rises or sets — the former being by far the more practical time unless you're an early bird.

When the moon is low on the horizon and viewed during dusk — just after the sun has set — it shines through the thickest part of Earth's atmosphere. As with a sunset, that gives the moon a muted orangey color (rather than the stark, bright white color when it's high up)because Earth's atmosphere scatters short-wavelength blue light while allowing longer-wavelength reddish light to shine through.

Related: Full moons of 2025: When is the next full moon?

The full moon can even look pinkish for a short time, depending on the atmosphere, but that's not why April's full moon is called the "Pink Moon." That name actually comes from the spring bloom of a wildflower called Phlox subulata (or "moss pink"), which is native to eastern North America, according to Almanac.

This full moon is also known as the Paschal Moon and is used to determine the date of Easter (Pascha in Latin) each year. In 2025, Easter falls on Sunday, April 20.

The Pink 'micromoon' rises with Spica

Every full moon is different, but what makes this month's special is the presence of the bright star Spica nearby.

Exactly where it will appear in relation to the moon depends on where you stand on Earth. From North America, Spica — the brightest star in the constellation Virgo — will be to the left/upper-left of the moon. However, from almost all of South America, the moon will occult Spica, according to In The Sky. From Europe, Spica will appear on the lower left, but since the moon will already be in the sky at dusk, it will be best seen on Sunday, April 13. Always check a moonrise calculator for the exact times for your location.

The "Pink Moon" will be relatively small in the sky. Unlike a "supermoon," which occurs when the full phase coincides with when the satellite is closest to Earth on its slightly elliptical orbital path, the opposite will happen on April 12. As it rises, the Pink Moon will be just a couple of hours past its apogee — its farthest point from Earth.

The following full moon will be the "Flower Moon" on May 12, 2025.

Moon quiz: What do you know about our nearest celestial neighbor?

What it is: Sunset on the moon, part of the first collection of high-definition imagery of a lunar sunset

Where it is: Mons Latreille, a mountain in the moon's Mare Crisium ("Sea of Crises") basin

When it was shared: March 18, 2025

Why it's so special: This week, a spacecraft on the moon took a unique sequence of images of a lunar sunset. Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander snapped these gorgeous high-definition photos from its position at the foot of Mons Latreille, a mountain in the "Sea of Crises" basin, close to the "Sea of Tranquility," where the Apollo 11 mission landed in 1969.

Taken from different cameras and stitched together, the footage shows the horizon glowing as the sun sets, with Earth and Venus on display. (Venus is the glowing dot to the upper right of the sun, and Earth is the large, bright object at the upper left.)

Related: 'Blood moon' total lunar eclipse: Stunning photos of our celestial neighbor turning red over the Americas

Sunsets are much rarer on the moon than they are on Earth. Because the moon is tidally locked with Earth, one day on the moon — sunrise to sunset — lasts 14.5 Earth days. That's half the time it takes for the moon to orbit Earth.

That explains why Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost mission, which launched Jan. 15, could sustain itself using solar panels for just over two weeks. After landing on March 2, it operated on solar power until transitioning to battery power on March 16. It finally "went dark" at 7:15 pm EDT that day, five hours after sending back its landmark images. In total, it operated during 346 hours of daylight on the moon, according to Firefly Aerospace.

As it went dark, Blue Ghost's mission came full circle, having begun with an image of a lunar sunrise on March 3. On March 14, the spacecraft took an iconic image of a "blood moon" total lunar eclipse as seen from Earth. From Blue Ghost's perspective on the moon, it saw a total solar eclipse — complete with a "diamond ring" effect — from a red lunar surface.

Blue Ghost Mission 1, nicknamed "Ghost Riders in the Sky," was a groundbreaking mission in lots of ways.

"Firefly's Blue Ghost Mission 1 marks the longest surface duration commercial mission on the moon to date, collecting extraordinary science data that will benefit humanity for decades to come," Nicky Fox, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., said in a statement.

For more sublime space images, check out our Space Photo of the Week archives.

While millions of Earthlings watched the moon turn red during last night's "blood moon" total lunar eclipse, a spacecraft parked on the moon was watching Earth swallow the sun.

In a series of stunning images shared by Texas-based Firefly Aerospace — the private company whose Blue Ghost lander successfully touched down on the moon's near side on March 2 — the distant sun is slowly eclipsed by the dark orb of Earth until only a bright ring remains. Firefly also shared a time-lapse video of the entire eclipse (embedded below), showing the sun progressively blocked by the Earth until near-total darkness descended.

This eerie effect marks the moment of totality, the total phase of a lunar eclipse during which the sun's disk is entirely blocked and the moon is subsumed into the darkest part of Earth's shadow.

The March 13-14 lunar eclipse lasted about six hours in total, from roughly midnight to 6 a.m. EDT Friday, with totality lasting about an hour, from 2:30 a.m. to 3:30 a.m. EDT. On Earth, that was when the moon appeared to turn red — an effect of Rayleigh scattering, wherein shorter, bluer wavelengths of sunlight are scattered by molecules in Earth's atmosphere, leaving only longer, redder wavelengths of light to reach the moon.

Related: The 10 best stargazing events of 2025

At the same time, the moon experienced a totality that was shockingly reminiscent of the monumental total solar eclipse that crossed North America last April. As Earth blocked the sun's disk, only our star's outer atmosphere, or corona, was visible to Blue Ghost's cameras on the moon. (The time-lapse video also shows the spacecraft turning red as more and more sunlight is filtered through Earth’s atmosphere).

As totality finally ended, sunlight peaked around the edges of Earth, creating a glorious "diamond ring" effect in the sky.

This sparkling view of totality is the result of the precise size and orbital distance ratios of Earth, the moon and the sun. Although eclipses are also possible on other planets, lifeforms on those worlds wouldn't get to see a diamond ring of starlight like we do.

While shots like these are incredibly rare, this is not the first time a total eclipse has been seen from the moon. NASA's Surveyor 3 lunar spacecraft recorded one such eclipse back in 1967.

This month's total lunar eclipse isn't just a blast from the past; it's also a harbinger. Eclipses always come in pairs, with solar eclipses inevitably occurring two weeks after lunar eclipses.

(This is thanks to the lunar cycle; lunar eclipses can happen only during a full moon, when Earth gets between the moon and the sun; solar eclipses happen only during a new moon, when the moon swings between Earth and the sun.)

The next solar eclipse on Earth will happen on March 29, although it will be a partial one — so viewers must wear certified eclipse glasses the whole time. During the eclipse, up to 94% of the sun's disk will be blocked by the moon, with the northeastern United States and eastern Canada primed to get good views.

The second moon landing attempt by Houston-based Intuitive Machines has ended just as the company's first did — with the lander dead after tipping over on its side inside a lunar crater, a new image confirms.

According to NASA, which hired Intuitive Machines to carry several scientific instruments to the moon as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, the lander prematurely suspended operations on Friday (March 7) when its battery depleted just 12 hours after the fumbled landing.

Before shutting down, the lander's various instruments managed to transmit about 250 megabytes of data to NASA, including a telltale photo showing two of the spacecraft's legs jutting upward, a half-lit Earth hovering majestically in the distance.

Related: Blue Ghost spacecraft captures rare, stunning views of Earth eclipsing the moon

It is not yet clear what went wrong for the IM-2 mission and the Athena lander, which officially touched down on the moon's near-side at 12:30 p.m. EST on Thursday (March 6) and ended operations at 1:15 a.m. on Friday. NASA noted that the spacecraft also landed more than 1,300 feet (400 meters) from its intended landing site near the moon's south pole.

"While we're disappointed in the outcome of the IM-2 mission, we remain committed to supporting our commercial vendors as they navigate the very difficult task of landing and operating on the Moon," Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for Exploration in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., said in a statement.

The past (and future) of private moon landings

This was the second lunar landing attempt for Intuitive Machines in as many years. The company completed its first landing on Feb. 22, 2024, when the Odysseus spacecraft touched down, becoming the first U.S. spacecraft to reach the lunar surface since Apollo 17 in 1972.

However, during its descent Odysseus' landing lasers malfunctioned, causing the spacecraft to temporarily lose the guidance needed to estimate landing distances. One of Odysseus' legs snapped on the lunar surface, and the spacecraft fell on its side, limiting some of its functions. The spacecraft fell silent one week after landing, shutting down power before the frigid lunar night set in.

NASA has committed to working with Intuitive Machines on two more lunar deliveries, with its IM-3 mission scheduled for 2026, and IM-4 slotted for 2027.

The landing attempt comes just days after a successful touchdown by rival space company, Firefly Aerospace. The company's Blue Ghost spacecraft aced its landing on Sunday (March 2), sending home an image of the lander's perfectly-upright shadow cast onto the lunar surface. Blue Ghost, also part of the CLPS initiative, has 10 NASA instruments in its lander that will operate on the moon's surface for about 14 Earth days (one lunar day).

A total lunar eclipse will occur on March 13-14, 2025 — the first on Earth since 2022 — but only the night side of the planet will get to see it. During this global event, which will occur at the same time across the world, the lunar surface will turn reddish for 65 minutes — a phenomenon often dubbed a "blood moon."

Although the point of greatest eclipse will be in the Pacific Ocean, North America and South America will get the best views. Some areas of Europe will get a slight view of the moonset, and East Asia will glimpse the spectacle at moonrise.

You can keep up with all the lunar eclipse action on our lunar eclipse live blog. We will also stream the eclipse live on Space.com. More details on how to watch online will be released closer to the event.

Unlike during a solar eclipse, it is safe to look at the moon during the entire lunar eclipse. They're not only completely safe but also leisurely, lasting many hours. This one occurs between 11:57 p.m. and 6 a.m. EDT (03:57 and 10:00 UTC) — a total of six hours — though arguably the most interesting part, totality, happens between 2:26 and 03:31 a.m. EDT (06:26 and 07:31 UTC).

RELATED: Why does the moon turn red during a total lunar eclipse?

Where will the March 2025 total lunar eclipse be visible?

The total lunar eclipse on March 13-14, 2025, will last just over six hours, beginning with a penumbral eclipse — when the moon enters Earth's fuzzy outer shadow and loses brightness — from 11:57 p.m. to 1:09 a.m. EDT (03:57 to 05:09 UTC). There will then be a partial phase — when the moon begins to enter Earth's darker umbral shadow and starts to turn red — from 1:09 a.m. to 2:26 a.m. (05:09 to 06:26 UTC). Totality — when the whole moon is within Earth's umbra — will last 65 minutes, from 2:26 a.m. to 3:31 a.m. EDT (06:26 to 07:31 UTC). The spectacle then reverses, with totality followed by a partial phase from 3:31 to 4:47 a.m. (07:31 to 08:47 UTC) and a penumbral phase from 4:47 to 6 a.m. EDT (08:47 to 10:00 UTC).

The entire eclipse will be visible — and at its best — across most of the Americas, with glimpses for Europe, Africa and East Asia. Here's a breakdown of the eclipse's visibility by region:

• North America: All phases of the eclipse will be visible across all 50 U.S. states (including Alaska and Hawaii), Canada and Mexico. South America: Most of the continent will witness the entire event, with totality visible from Brazil, Argentina and Chile starting after midnight on March 14.
• Europe: Western Europe — including Spain, France and the U.K. — will see totality as the moon sets early on the morning of March 14.
• Africa: Extreme Western Africa — including Cape Verde, Morocco and Senegal — will see totality as the moon sets early on the morning of March 14.
• Oceania: New Zealanders will see the eclipse in its later stages, with the moon already in partial shadow as it rises on March 14.

Where will the total lunar eclipse be visible in the U.S.?

All U.S. time zones will get an excellent view of all phases of this total lunar eclipse, with Hawaii and parts of Alaska missing only the beginning of the initial penumbral phase. Here are the key times for major North American time zones:

• Eastern time zone: The penumbral phase begins at 11:57 p.m. EDT on March 13, partial at 1:09 a.m. EDT on March 14, totality at 2:26 a.m. EDT, partial at 3:31 a.m. EDT and penumbral at 4:47 a.m. EDT. The eclipse ends at 6 a.m. EDT.
• Central time zone: The penumbral phase begins at 10:57 p.m. CDT on March 13, partial at 12:09 a.m. CDT on March 14, totality at 1:26 a.m. CDT, partial at 2:31 a.m. CDT and penumbral at 3:47 a.m. CDT. The eclipse ends at 5 a.m. CDT.
• Mountain time zone: The penumbral phase begins at 9:57 p.m. MDT on March 13, partial at 11:09 p.m. MDT, totality at 12:26 a.m. MDT on March 14, partial at 1:31 a.m. MDT and penumbral at 2:47 a.m. MDT. The eclipse ends at 4 a.m. MDT.
• Pacific time zone: The penumbral phase begins at 8:57 p.m. PDT on March 13, partial at 10:09 p.m. PDT, totality at 11:26 p.m. PDT, partial at 12:31 a.m. PDT on March 14 and penumbral at 1:47 a.m. PDT. The eclipse ends at 3 a.m. PDT.
• Alaska time zone: The penumbral phase begins at 7:57 p.m. AKDT on March 13, partial at 9:09 p.m. AKDT, totality at 10:26 p.m. AKDT, partial at 11:31 p.m. EDT and penumbral at 12:47 a.m. AKDT on March 14. The eclipse ends at 2 a.m. AKDT.
• Hawaii time zone: The penumbral phase is already underway when the moon rises at 6:32 p.m. HST on March 13, partial at 7:09 p.m. HST, totality at 8:26 p.m. HST, partial at 9:31 p.m. HST and penumbral at 10:47 p.m. HST. The eclipse ends at midnight HST.

Where will the March 2025 total lunar eclipse be visible in Europe?

Europe gets a poor view of this total lunar eclipse. In London, the penumbral phase will be viewable from 3:47 a.m. GMT on March 14 and the partial phase from 5:09 a.m. GMT. However, the full moon will set at 6:22 a.m. GMT, just before totality begins, so the only spectacle will be a barely distinguishable line of Earth's shadow across the moon as it sinks into the western horizon. Locations farther west get a slightly better view. From Cardiff, Wales, totality will begin at 6:26 a.m. GMT, 10 minutes before the local moonset, while in Dublin, the local moonset isn't until 6:48 a.m. GMT.

Arguably, the only locations in Europe to see this eclipse in an impressive way are Iceland and Greenland. From Reykjavik, Iceland, totality occurs between 06:26 and 7:31 a.m. GMT, and the local moonset isn't until 7:58 a.m.

What will the weather be like for the March 2025 total lunar eclipse?

For those on the night side of Earth, a clear sky is arguably the only important factor for visibility, since any location with the moon high in the sky will have precisely the same view. In the map above, blue areas have the smallest chance of clouds. Those locations include Southern California, Arizona and New Mexico; much of Mexico; Chile's Atacama Desert and western Argentina; and extreme Western Africa.

In North America, western parts of the U.S. and Canada typically have better chances of clear skies in March compared with eastern regions. In Europe, cloud cover is hard to predict in March.

Bibliography

Anderson, J. Global Cloudiness by Month. Retrieved Feb. 17, 2025, from https://eclipsophile.com/global-cloud Jubier, X. (n.d.). Total Lunar Eclipse of 2025 March 14 from Chile, Argentina, the USA, or Mexico. Retrieved Feb. 17, 2025, from http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/lunar_eclipses/TLE_20250314_pg01.html

Time and Date. (n.d.). 13–14 March 2025 Total Lunar Eclipse (Blood Moon). Retrieved Feb. 17, 2025, from https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/lunar/2025-march-14

Wright, E and NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio. March 13-14, 2025 Total Lunar Eclipse: Visibility Map. Retrieved Feb. 17, 2025, from https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5473/

Originally posted on Space.com.