The biggest Supermoon of the year will be visible on Wednesday as the Moon comes to the closest point to Earth in its orbit.
The full moon is photographed during the phenomenon known as the pink supermoon, over the sky in San Salvador on April 7, 2020.
After Earth touched the farthest distance from sun's, it seems to be drawn to the Moon like ancient tales. The lunar body will come closest to Earth on July 13 as the supermoon appears in the skies above the planet.
At its closest, the Moon will be just 3,57,264 kilometers away from the planet. While the full Moon may appear for a couple of days, the completeness will be momentarily in reality.
The supermoon could have tidal effects on the planet, leading to a large range of high and low ocean tides. Astronomers expect that coastal storms at sea around this time could lead to aggravated coastal flooding.
WHAT IS A SUPERMOON?
A supermoon does not mean that the lunar object will have some special powers, instead, it means that it will appear a bit bigger than before and even a bit brighter than seen before.
This phenomenon is due to the Moon coming close to Earth in its orbit, a position known as perigee. The term supermoon was coined by astrologer Richard Noelle in 1979 and refers to either a new or full moon that occurs when the Moon is within 90% of perigee, its closest approach to Earth.
The waxing gibbous moon rises in the countryside of the village of Tall Sallur in the rebel-held Afrin region of Syria's northern Aleppo province on June 13, 2022, a day ahead of the June "strawberry supermoon".
With the Moon orbiting the Earth in an elliptical path, the farthest point in this ellipse is called the apogee and is about 4,05,500 kilometers from Earth on average.
BIGGEST SUPERMOON OF 2022
The Supermoon observed on July 13 will be the biggest of the year and is also known as the buck moon. According to time and date, the full moon is giving the name buck moon due to antlers that emerge from a buck’s forehead around this time of the year.
Its other names across the world include Thunder Moon, Hay Moon, and wyrt Moon. Native Americans also call it Salmon Moon, Raspberry Moon, and Calming Moon.
WHEN CAN YOU SEE THE SUPERMOON?
The buck supermoon will be visible at 12:07 am on the night of July 13. It will next appear a year later, on July 3, 2023.
The last supermoon of the year was seen in June this year, known as the strawberry moon. At the time, the Moon was 3,63,300 kilometers from Earth.
As countries including India prepare to send spacecraft and balloons to Venus, a new study dashes hopes of finding life in the clouds hovering above the planet. Researchers have found no evidence of chemical fingerprints that could raise the possibility of life ever existing in the thick clouds.
Led by researchers from Cambridge University, the study used a combination of biochemistry and atmospheric chemistry to test the ‘life in the clouds’ hypothesis, which astronomers have speculated about for decades. They found that life cannot explain the composition of the Venusian atmosphere.
The study published in the journal Nature Communications states that it has been proposed that abundant Venusian life could obtain energy from its environment using three possible sulfur energy-metabolisms. The new results could still be useful for studying the atmospheres of similar planets throughout the galaxy.
“We’ve spent the past two years trying to explain the weird sulfur chemistry we see in the clouds of Venus. Life is pretty good at weird chemistry, so we’ve been studying whether there’s a way to make life a potential explanation for what we see,” co-author Dr Paul Rimmer from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences said in a statement.
The team used a combination of atmospheric and biochemical models to study the chemical reactions that are expected to occur, given the known sources of chemical energy in Venus’s atmosphere. Venus has long been known as Earth's mysterious twin that has been scared for millions of years due to extreme climatic changes.
The team looked at a particular feature of the Venusian atmosphere, the abundance of sulfur dioxide (SO2). On Earth, most SO2 in the atmosphere, comes from volcanic emissions. On Venus, there are high levels of SO2 lower in the clouds, but it somehow gets sucked out of the atmosphere, at higher altitudes.
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