The month of June is almost at an end, and just before we officially hit the halfway mark of 2026, the \u201cstrawberry moon\u201d will rise in the skies over the Chicago area.<\/p>\n
This month\u2019s full moon comes extremely late in June, but it will also be noteworthy in at least one other way, according to astronomers.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what you need to know.<\/p>\n
When is the June full moon?<\/p>\n
According to NASA, the June full moon will officially occur just before 7 p.m. Central time on Monday, meaning the best time for Chicago-area residents to see the full moon will be just after sunset.<\/p>\n
Why is it called the \u201cstrawberry\u201d moon?<\/p>\n
According to the Royal Museums Greenwich, the \u201cstrawberry moon\u201d gets its name not from a reddish color on its surface, but because of the time of year when it occurs, as strawberries are typically harvested beginning in June in North America.<\/p>\n
Other cultures have different names for the full moon in June, including the \u201chot moon\u201d since June is the official start of summer in the Northern Hemisphere.<\/p>\n
What else will be special about this month\u2019s full moon?<\/p>\n
Most readers of NBC Chicago are familiar with the term \u201csupermoon,\u201d when the moon appears slightly bigger and brighter in the sky when it\u2019s closer to Earth.<\/p>\n
Instead of that phenomenon this month, the Chicago area will be treated to a \u201cmicromoon,\u201d as the moon will be full when it\u2019s nearly at its \u201capogee,\u201d or the furthest point in its orbit around the Earth.<\/p>\n
Since the moon\u2019s orbit, like the Earth\u2019s around the sun, isn\u2019t a perfect oval, its distance from Earth constantly changes, with \u201cperigee\u201d the point where it\u2019s at its closest point and the \u201capogee\u201d when it\u2019s at its furthest.<\/p>\n
This month\u2019s \u201cmicromoon\u201d will be the final one for 2026, according to NASA.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve already had our first \u201csupermoon\u201d of 2026, but there will be two more, with November 24 the next time that phenomenon will take place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The month of June is almost at an end, and just before we officially hit the halfway mark…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":730408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[157,79,193],"class_list":["post-730407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-chicago","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/730408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}