Full Sturgeon SuperMoon, 2024

The August 2024 Full Sturgeon Moon is low in the southeast in this view due south at 9:30 PM, EDT, 2 hours after its rising, Monday, August 19th. The teapot of Sagittarius is on the meridian, with Scorpio and its heart, the red supergiant Antares, to the west.

I gazed at the full moon,
hanging low and bright oe’r the trees last night,
warm and inviting on that September night.

Full Sturgeon Moon, 2024

According to lore, August’s full moon is also known as a “Sturgeon Moon”. We’ve written extensively about the lore behind the moon’s names, most of which honor native traditions or coincide with seasonal events. For example, last month’s full moon (July) was the Full Buck Moon since July’s full moon occurs when bucks (male deer) are in full-growth mode. Bucks shed and regrow their antlers each year, producing a larger and more impressive set as the years progress.

August’s moon is named as such since the giant sturgeon of the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain were most readily caught during August.

Additional information on the lore of the moon and its names can be found here and here. It also should be noted that each full Moon name is applied to the entire lunar month in which it occurred, not solely to the full Moon.

We covered this in our News and Noteworthy for August, 2024 story, but need to update it as no mention was made that this year’s Full Sturgeon Moon will also be a Supermoon!

What is a Supermoon?

Kepler’s First Law of Orbital Motion teaches us that all orbits are elliptical, some orbits more elliptical than others. This property of an ellipse, known as the eccentricity, depends, among other things, on the magnitude of the respective masses.

All elliptical orbits necessarily have an apogee, the most distant point in the orbit and a perigee, the closest point in the orbit to the other orbiting body. In the case of our moon, a supermoon occurs when the moon is at its perigee point during the full-moon phase. The moon will appear ever so slightly larger simply because it’s closer.

There are 4 supermoons in 2024, this month’s, August, is the first, then September, October, and November. Incidentally, it is also the 3rd year in a row that August’s Full Sturgeon moon has been a supermoon!

2023: Tonight’s Full Sturgeon SuperMoon
2022: Full Sturgeon SuperMoon Tonight!

Featured image

Full moon as imaged by the author with his 15 cm F/4.2 Newtonian astrograph. Prominently placed in the lunar southwest is the crater Tycho with its sprawling and easily identifiable crater ejecta and central peak. Note also the detail along the south and southeast lunar terminator.