A Strawberry Moon, The Summer Solstice… And Asteroid Day!

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While the relatively short nights of summer mean less dark skies for stargazing, this month should still provide plenty to occupy those of us given to looking to the sky. June will feature several opportunities to see Mars and the moon in close proximity to Regulus, the iconic blue star(s) that shine from the heart of Leo, along with two weeks' worth of excellent opportunities for observing Mercury. And did you know that June 30 is International Asteroid Day?

This month, the moon will reach peak illumination in the early hours of June 11. If you're on EDT, the full moon will be at 3:44 a.m. This month's moon is called the Strawberry Moon, and of all the lovely names for the full moon , June's might just be the prettiest.

The name refers to the berries that ripen as the summer solstice approaches, not the color of the moon itself, which will remain resolutely silver. Several Native American languages use this term, including Ojibwe, Oneida, and the Mahican dialect of the Stockbridge-Munsee band of Wisconsin. Other languages have similarly poetic names: in the Catawba language it's the "River Moon" and in Cherokee it's "They Are Arriving/Plants in Garden are Sprouting Month", while in Seneca and Tunica it's simply the "Summer Moon."

Our solar system's innermost planet can be difficult to observe—it's small, dim, and a lot of the time, it simply gets lost in the glare of the sun.

However, this month marks one of the regular periods when Mercury appears far enough removed from the sun to be visible to the naked eye.

Throughout June, Mercury will approach its maximum eastern elongation ,the point at which it appears furthest east of the sun. Unfortunately, its magnitude—i.e. its apparent brightness—will decline over the course of the month, and by the time it hits maximum elongation in early July, it'll be dim enough that you might struggle to spot it without the aid of a telescope or some binoculars.

This means that mid-June will offer the best balance of elongation and magnitude. As per the ever indispensable Farmer's Almanac , Mercury should be visible between 9:00 p.m. and 9:15 p.m. local time, low in the sky to the west-northwest. On June 26, it'll peek out from slightly below and to the left of the crescent moon.