This month’s “Buck Moon” also happens when the moon will be at its closest to Earth for the year.

What You Need To Know

  • July's full moon is commonly called the "Buck Moon," but sometimes goes by "Thunder Moon"

  • It'll be its fullest before it rises in the U.S. Wednesday evening

  • The full moon is a supermoon this month

Full moons’ nicknames typically relate to something from that time of year. July’s full moon is called the “Buck Moon” because this is when bucks' (male deer) new antlers have grown more sizeable after starting late in the spring.

An American Whitetail deer buck. (AP Photo/Dr. Scott M. Lieberman)

This month’s moon is also called the Thunder Moon.

The moon will be its fullest at 1:37 p.m. ET while it’s below our horizon, but it’ll still be essentially full when it rises Wednesday evening.

This is happening during the closest point of the moon’s orbit around the Earth, known as “perigee.” It’ll be about 224,000 miles away. This also means we have a supermoon, which appears a little bigger than other times of the year. Just don’t expect it to loom large in the sky, since it’s pretty hard to tell the difference from memory.

Here's the cloud cover forecast for late Wednesday evening across the country.

Check out our 2022 celestial calendar so you don’t miss out on other night sky events happening the rest of the year.

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