The Flower Moon will bloom in the night sky this week and dazzle the world for three days.
The moon will appear full at 9:35am ET Thursday and reach its peak 50 minutes after the sun goes down.
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 that was later turned into a Martin Scorses film.
The moon will appear full at 9:35am Thursday and reach its peak 50 minutes after the sun goes down. Pictured is a super Flower Moon that happened May 25, 2023
The Flower Moon coincides with the flowers blooming in May, according to The Old Farmer’s Almanac.
And it is also called a ‘Mother’s Moon’, ‘Milk Moon’ or ‘Corn Planting Moon.’
Native Americans named the celestial event as they knew it was time to start planting crops.
According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, moonrise will happen by roughly 8:35pm ET Thursday, crossing the meridian at 1:14am before setting at 5:46am on Friday. morning.
Skygazers are set to get a preview of the Flower Moon on Wednesday when it rises just a few minutes before sunset – Americas should cast their eyes to the east to see it.
But the main event will take place on Thursday when the moon appears next to Antares, which lies about 600 light-years from Earth – one light year is about five trillion miles.
The star, while a blazing ruby color, is nearing the end of its life because it is running out of fuel.
The Flower Moon will also shine near Antares, an aging giant star that is set to explode, located in the constellation Scorpius
Once that happens, Antares will collapse and become supernova – the powerful and luminous explosion of a star.
Scientists captured images of the star in 2017 using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLTI), revealing the most detailed look yet.
The photos showed that there was a turbulent, low-density gas much further from the star than predicted.
The team suggested that this movement could not result from 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 movements in the extended atmospheres of stars like Antares.