Full Flower Moon will rise near a red supergiant TONIGHT – here’s how to see the cosmic wonders
The Flower Moon will rise Thursday night near a red supergiant star.
The moon reaches its zenith 50 minutes after the sun sets and is visible in the east.
Adding even more wonder to this event will be the star Antares, which is about 600 light-years away from Earth, as it will appear in close proximity to the Flower Moon.
Although the star is a blazing ruby color, it is nearing the end of its life as it is running out of fuel and is expected to explode in at least a million years.
The moon will appear full at 9:35 a.m. Thursday and will reach its zenith 50 minutes after the sun sets. Pictured is a super Flower Moon that occurred on May 25, 2023. Photo taken on May 22 in New York City – a sneak peek at the Flower Moon
The term “flower moon” also marked the beginning of the reign of terror against the Osage Nation in the 1920s, when white men murdered members of the tribe to inherit their oil assets.
The historical events inspired the 2017 book, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” written by journalist David Grann, which was later turned into a Martin Scorses film.
According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, the Flower Moon coincides with the flowers blooming in May.
And it is also called a ‘Mother Moon’, ‘Milk Moon’ or ‘Corn Plant Moon’.
Native Americans called the celestial event because they knew it was time to start planting crops.
According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, the moonrise will occur around 8:35 PM ET on Thursday, crossing the meridian at 1:14 AM and setting at 5:46 AM on Friday. morning.
The Flower Moon will also shine near Antares, an aging giant star about to explode in the constellation of Scorpio.
The moon will appear close to Antares, but will eventually block the star as it travels across the night sky.
The star has been a subject of research for decades as scientists keep a close eye on its collapse. will collapse and become a supernova: the powerful and luminous explosion of a star.
Antares is only about two to three percent the age of the Sun, but due to its large mass, its time is almost up.
The star has a diameter of 400 to 430 million kilometers, while the Sun measures about 1,365,000 kilometers.
Scientists captured images of Antares in 2017 using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLTI), revealing the most detailed image yet.
The photos showed that low-density, turbulent gas was much further away from the star than predicted.
The team suggested that this movement could not be due to convection – the process by which the movement of matter transfers energy from the core to the outer atmosphere of many stars.
This indicated that a new, currently unknown process may be needed to explain these motions in the extended atmospheres of stars like Antares.