A stargazers dream is coming true this month with both a strawberry supermoon and five planets aligning during the month of June.
On June 14, the strawberry supermoon will be in full effect — bright and red — and visible around 7:15 a.m. The moon is best viewed in clear skies clear. But even if the weather doesn’t cooperate, Space.com has you covered with a live webcast for free.
“We will admire the full moon rising above the glorious monuments of Rome, the Eternal City,” astrophysicist Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project wrote in an email alert.
As if the strawberry moon weren’t enough, the planets will be putting on a show as well. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn will line up in a row in the order of their distance from the sun.
To get the most of the beautiful site you may need to adjust your normal wake up time. According to experts, the planetary alignment can be seen best about an hour before the sunrise while looking to the East. The alignment will be visible throughout, but will be especially bright on June 24.
“I would say that on the 24th, the waning crescent moon actually inserts itself between Venus and Mars,” said Patrick So, an observatory program supervisor at Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. “That would be a really beautiful opportunity for anyone who has a cell phone or even a wide-angle camera, or lens with a good camera to take a picture of the planets from the horizon, it will be Mercury, Venus, then the crescent moon and then Mars, Jupiter and Saturn and that that will occur on the 24th.”
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