Take a peek at the sky tonight and you’ll see a full moon. A full moon is when the moon and the sun are opposite of each other from an earth perspective.
The moon will turn full at 2:09 EDT and just nine minutes earlier it will arrive at its closest point to earth in 2014. Expect a wide tide range and a ‘super’ moon on August 11th. Photographers get your tripod and cameras ready!
Rise and shine if you want to catch this spectacular sight, which will take place Aug. 18 and 19 in the Southern Hemisphere.
Sky gazers will get the opportunity to watch as two brilliant and bright planets- Venus and Jupiter- experience a close encounter with each other, making for one beautiful night sky display.
Sounds pretty fancy, right? It simply means three solar system bodies coming together, not in distance, but in perspective. For star watchers it means some pretty sweet night sights! It’s particularly exciting when the moon and planets are involved.
This time a crescent moon, Mars and Saturn will cluster together in a bright and beautiful display around dusk.
Also called the Moon Cake Festival, China’s harvest festival is an occasion to scoff these sweet treats. The cakes, made of a thin dough shell containing fillings such as jelly, dates and nuts or red bean paste, start appearing everywhere a month before the celebration. If they’re not sick of the snacks by the time of the event, celebrants eat them within view of the real star of the festival: the moon. Held on the September full moon, during the autumn equinox, the tradition is about observing the transition of the seasons. In Japan, one of the other Asian countries where faces turn to the night sky, people even climb onto rooftops to get closer to the moon.
The longest-running series of benefit concerts in America, Farm Aid grew out of a comment made by the Bob Dylan at the Live Aid concert in Philadelphia. Suggesting it would be great if the musical community could help America’s struggling family farms as well, Dylan inspired Neil Young, Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp to organise an event. The first Farm Aid took place two months later in Champaign, Illinois and raised $7 million. Two decades later, the concerts have raised more than $30 million and featured great American axe wielders such as Tom Petty, Stevie Ray Vaughan, the Grateful Dead (by satellite in 1987) and, of course, the organizers.
Kitsch, possibly of the unintentional kind, comes out to play at the Cows’ Ball. More than 50 years old, the festival marks a winter homecoming; not of men, but of cattle, which return to the alpine Bohinj valley after a summer spent in green pastures. Daisy and friends are truly the belles of the rural ball, as they are decorated with wreaths and shown off on a parade. Accompanied by herders, cheesemakers, milkmaids and other dairy-farming types, they pass Lake Bohinj and, rising 130m above it, Govin Waterfall. The falls are only active after heavy rain, so hopefully there won’t be any spray to spoil the animals’ get-up.