The last Full Moon of spring shines in the sky this week
Do you have reasonably clear skies this week? If so, pause for a few minutes during the next few nights, turn your gaze to the sky, and take in the beauty of the final Full Moon of Spring 2025.
This Full Moon is timed to occur at 7:44 UTC on June 11, or 3:44 a.m. EDT.
However, due to the Moon's distance and its size in the sky, at a glance it will appear full from Monday evening through until just after midnight Thursday morning. Viewing the Moon through a telescope or a good pair of binoculars, though, will reveal the very thin sliver of the Moon's disk in shadow on Monday and Wednesday nights.
This is the final Full Moon of spring for this year, and the first 'normal' sized Full Moon after a string of three micromoons in March, April, and May.
If you'd like to see the Moon look exceptionally big, head out around sunset and look for it on the eastern horizon. Or, if you're up before the Sun rises, look for it as it is setting in the west. Either time, the Moon will look huge, due to the Moon Illusion.
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The name of this Full Moon really doesn't have anything to do with colour. Still, we could see it take on a strawberry hue, due to wildfire smoke drifting across the country.
Every Full Moon we see during the year has its own popular name. These names were gathered together, roughly a century ago, and published in the Farmer's Alamanac. They originated from Colonial and European folklore, but mostly from the indigenous peoples of what is now known as the northeastern United States and the Great Lakes region.
This graphic collects all the relevant data for the 12 Full Moons of 2025. (Scott Sutherland/NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio/Fred Espenak)
The popular name of the June Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon, as this was traditionally the time of year to pick ripened strawberries.
Although the Colonial and European names used by the almanacs referred specifically to the Full Moon, the other names they added to the list actually did not. Or, at least that was not their only use.
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Like other advanced cultures around the world, the indigenous peoples of North America used a sophisticated lunar calendar to track time. For example, the Anishinaabe visualized their calendar using the pattern of plates on the shell of a turtle. The 28 small plates around the shell's edge corresponded to the days of each lunar cycle, and the 13 large plates on the turtle's back were the 13 lunar months of the year.
Each of the 13 moons was given a name, similar to the months of the Gregorian calendar. However, whereas the names of the months came from gods, rulers, and their numerical order in the calendar, the names of the moons were taken from the aspect of nature that affected the peoples' lives at that time of year.
The Strawberry Moon corresponds closely with the month of June in the Gregorian calendar. As shown below, though, it does not match up perfectly with the calendar month.
The phases of the Moon during the 2025 Strawberry Moon lunation, from May 27 to June 25. (Scott Sutherland/NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio)
(Thumbnail image courtesy Eva Hurlbut, of St. Thomas, ON, who captured this reddish-hued Full Strawberry Moon on June 3, 2023.)
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