Full Strawberry Moon tonight & SUMMER SOLSTICEtoday!

  Courtesy U.S. Naval
Observatory   June 21st Full Strawberry Moon 11:14 pm  

Von Riefel, Carlos

Full Moon names date back to Native Americans, of what is now the northern and eastern United States. The tribes kept track of the seasons by giving distinctive names to each recurring full Moon. Their names were applied to the entire month in which each occurred. There was some variation in the Moon names, but in general, the same ones were current throughout the Algonquin tribes from New England to Lake Superior. European settlers followed that custom and created some of their own names. Since the lunar month is only 29 days long on the average, the full Moon dates shift from year to year.

• Full Strawberry Moon - June This name was universal to every Algonquin tribe. However, in Europe they called it the Rose Moon. Also because the relatively short season for harvesting strawberries comes each year during the month of June . . . so the full Moon that occurs during that month was christened for the strawberry!

MOON ILLUSION: The lowest-hanging full moon in 18 years could play tricks on your brain this week. Get the full story from Science@NASA.

SUMMER SOLSTICE: The 2005 northern summer solstice is today. The sun is at its highest declination of the year, so high that in some places the sun never sets--not even at midnight. This picture of the midnight sun comes from Antero Rahtu of Rovaniemi, Finland:

Rovaniemi is 7 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle, which means, strictly speaking, the midnight sun ought to dip below the horizon. What's going on? "The sun can be seen here because sunbeams are bent by the atmosphere," explains Rahtu.