The Flower Moon will is set to rise near a red supergiant star Thursday night.
The moon will peak 50 minutes after the sun goes down and be visible in the east.
Adding more wonder to this event will be the star Antares, which lies about 600 light-years from Earth, as it will appear in close proximity to the Flower Moon.
The star, while a blazing ruby color, is nearing the end of its life because it is running out of fuel and is expected to explode in at least one million years.
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. Picture taken on May 22 in New York City – the Flower Moon’s preview
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 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.
The Flower Moon will also shine near Antares, an aging giant star that is set to explode, located in the constellation Scorpius
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 study for decades, as scientists are closely monitoring its collapse. will collapse and become supernova – the powerful and luminous explosion of a star.
Antares is only about two or three percent of the sun’s age, but because of its great mass, its time is about up.
The star has a a diameter of 400 to 430 million miles, while the sun is about 865,000 miles.
Scientists captured images of Antares 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.