Overview
- The Strawberry Moon will reach peak illumination Monday at about 7:57 p.m. ET and will appear full to the naked eye for a night or two surrounding that moment.
- This full moon occurs just after lunar apogee so it is a micromoon and will be measurably smaller and slightly dimmer than average with reported distances near 251,000–252,500 miles from Earth.
- Because the full phase follows the June solstice it will follow a very low, southeasterly-to-southwesterly path in Northern Hemisphere skies, a configuration tied to an 18.6-year lunar cycle that experts say won’t be matched until around 2043.
- Warm orange or red tones at moonrise come from Earth’s atmosphere scattering shorter blue wavelengths and from dust or smoke in the air, so viewers should seek an unobstructed southeastern horizon at local moonrise and check local rise times from services such as TimeandDate or the Royal Observatory Greenwich.
- The name 'Strawberry Moon' comes from Indigenous North American harvest traditions and not the Moon’s color, and this June full moon is the seventh of 2026 because May contained a rare Blue Moon.