This Is a Pretty Rare Month for Moon Watchers

August will be a marvelous month for a moon watch, two times over. As NPR explains, August not only has two full moons, it has two supermoons—full moons that appear bigger than usual because they occur when the moon is closest to Earth during its orbit around us. August has two of the four supermoons we'll get this year:

• Tuesday: Viewers in the US can see the first one in the evening sky on Tuesday as the moon rises in the southeast, per the AP. (The technical peak is actually 2:32pm Tuesday, notes CNN.) This particular full moon is also called the sturgeon moon, so named because this has traditionally been the time of year when sturgeon were caught in the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain, explains the Old Farmer's Almanac.

• August 30: The second supermoon will be visible to US viewers the night of the 30th, with its peak coming at 9:36pm ET. This one is a blue moon, a term that refers to a second full moon in a month. But it's also a much rarer blue supermoon. The last one happened in 2009, and the next one after this month won't happen until 2032, per NPR.

(More moon stories.)