Is there a Supermoon tonight?:July Supermoon Key times and details on how to see the Buck Moon

Stargazers in Edinburgh will be looking up tonight in the hope of catching a glimpse of a bigger and brighter supermoon on Wednesday night.

July’s full moon is known as the Buck Moon because male deer shed and regrow their antlers around this time of year.

Here’s how you can see the supermoon in Edinburgh tonight.

Why is it called the Buck Moon?

Here's how you can see the supermoon in Edinburgh tonight. The strawberry supermoon sets behind above Huddersfield in Yorkshire. Picture date: Tuesday June 14, 2022.

A supermoon is the result of a full moon occurring when it is near its closest point to the Earth in its orbit.

The Buck Moon will be the biggest and brightest supermoon of the year as it represents the moon arriving at its closest point to the Earth for 2022.

The name came from a Native American system which uses the different months’ full moons as a calendar to keep track of the seasons.

July Supermoon.

What day do you have the best chance of seeing the July supermoon?

The best time to view this supermoon will be any time during the night of the 13th July, when the moon will rise in the east just after sunset, and set in the west a little before sunrise.

There is no ideal location to see the moon – meaning that locals in the Capital will have a chance of witnessing the supermoon.

Anna Ross, a planetarium astronomer at Royal Museums Greenwich, in south-east London said: ““There is no particular location you need to be to observe this event as this is a bright full moon. As long as the night is clear of clouds it will be easy to spot whether you are in a light-polluted city or a dark area of countryside.”

Best time to see the Superrmoon in Edinburgh?

The moonrise in Edinburgh is 10:35pm, meaning that locals will have the chance to see the supermoon from 10:35pm.

The Royal Astronomical Society’s deputy executive director Dr Robert Massey “there is a lot of these” supermoons, but added: “The moon is a beautiful object – it is a fantastic thing, go out and look at it and enjoy the view.”

He added: “So that’s when you should start looking but to see it then of course you need a perfect horizon, so you need to be looking out over a very flat landscape or the sea.”