July full 'Buck Moon' set to peak
The moon will reach its peak at 4:37 p.m. EDT on July 10. During moonrise the lunar disk appears larger than it is as it is positioned close to the horizon. It tricks our brains into giving the illusion that it's larger than it is when viewed.
It will be most visible after sunset at 8:53 p.m. EDT.
"The best place to view the moon will be in an area with an unobstructed view of the eastern horizon," Petro added.
"The nice thing about the full moon is it looks full for about a day on either side of it, so on the night of the 9th, for instance, if you go out and look at the full moon, it will look effectively full. Similarly, if you miss it on the 10th, the night of the 11th it will also look fairly full," said Noah Petro, chief of NASA's Planetary Geology, Geophysics and Geochemistry Laboratory.
The Buck Moon also sometimes goes by "Thunder Moon," it's named after the seasonal summer storms in July.
The Buck Moon has a golden or reddish hue after it's risen, which is caused by Rayleigh scattering.
The summer solstice makes the moon look low in the sky after sunset; this effect was in full force in 2025 due to the phenomenon "Major Lunar Still". It takes place every 18.6 years, when the sun's gravity drags the moon's tilted orbit into its most extreme inclination relative to Earth's celestial equator.
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