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<p><div class="image-container float_right"><div class="image"><p class="source on-image">REUTERS</p><p class="caption">A <keyword id="1872222" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="Harvest-Moon">Harvest Moon</keyword> seen in 2000.</p></div></div></p>
<p>Turn your attention toward the sky tonight. For those in North America, the Harvest <keyword id="42440" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Moon">Moon</keyword> will look brightest and fullest at sunset on Wednesday.</p>
<p>The Harvest Moon is the name for the full moon that is closest to the autumnal equinox, or the official start of fall, which will occur on Sept. 22.</p>
<p>Traditionally, every full moon has special nickname that says something about the season or time of year in which it appears. For example, the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-february-snow-moon-2013-2">Snow Moon</a> is February during winter and the Flower Moon is in May during spring.</p>
<p>Before electricity, moonlight was crucial for farmers who had to work after sundown, especially in early autumn when many crops are ready to be harvested. For that reason, the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox (it can come either two weeks before or two weeks after depending on the year) was called the "Harvest Moon."</p>
<p>But the Harvest Moon is special for another reason.</p>
<p>Typically, the moon rises about 50 minutes later each day throughout the year. But when the full moon occurs near the fall equinox, the gaps between moonrises are shorter. The moon rises only about 30 minutes later each night, appearing at sunset. This has to do with the moon's path, which makes a narrow angle with the horizon at the beginning of autumn. Not only does the moon rise unusually early in evening, but this happens for several nights in a row - before and after the full moon - resulting in three consecutive days of the moon appearing at nearly the same time.</p>
<p>Both of these events give the illusion that the Harvest Moon is bigger, brighter, and closer, but it's not. The moon is simply closest to the horizon at sunset, when most people are looking for the Harvest Moon. When the moon is near the horizon, it must pass through more dust and cloud particles that scatter blue light and only let red pass through.</p>
<p>That's why the Harvest Moon usually looks yellow, orange, or red.</p>
<p>If you can't step outside to grab an eyeful of the moon, the <a href="http://events.slooh.com/" target="_blank">Slooh Space Camera</a> will be showing real-time images of the Harvest Moon online.</p>

The Harvest Moon Is Coming 

<div type="image" title="green comet streaking across starry night sky with long white tail" height="1600" width="2492" msid="97185531" hostid="261"></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>A rare green comet is flying past Earth, making its closest pass on Thursday.</li><li>Comet ZTF hasn't approached our planet since the last Ice Age, and humans may never see it again.</li></ul><p>A rare green comet is passing Earth, and this could be humanity's last chance to see it. Stunning photos reveal what you might see if you look to the pre-dawn skies and spot the ball of frozen gas and dust shooting past this week.</p><p>Formally, the comet is called C/2022 E3 (ZTF), named for the Zwicky Transient Facility, which first discovered it in March. But skywatchers call it Comet ZTF for short.</p><p>This icy cosmic passerby is painting a green streak across the sky through the first few days of February, reaching its closest point to Earth on Thursday, skimming past from 27 million miles away. You probably need binoculars to spot it, under <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-dark-skies-look-like-how-many-more-stars-than-cities-suburbs">dark skies far from city lights</a>.</p><p>If you catch Comet ZTF with a telescope, which would offer the clearest view, you could see something like this:</p><div type="image" title="green comet with diffuse white skirt and long white tail" height="1976" width="3044" msid="97534076" hostid="261" sizebytes="213704"></div><p>Many comets glow green like this. Laboratory <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2113315118" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">research</a> has <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/why-do-some-comets-glow-green" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">linked this aura</a> to a reactive molecule called dicarbon, which emits green light as sunlight decays it.</p><p>Though green comets occasionally pass Earth, this one won't return for about 50,000 years, if ever. That's how long it takes Comet ZTF to orbit the sun, which means that Neanderthals still walked the Earth when it last whizzed by, during the last Ice Age.</p><div type="image" title="green comet with yellow skirt and long white tail in starry night sky" height="2692" width="2046" msid="97185532" hostid="261"></div><p>"We like viewing and photographing the comet because bright ones are not only rare, but beautiful like this one. The tails of comets are never two alike," Chris Schur, an amateur astronomer and night-sky photographer in Arizona, told Insider in an email. "[Comets] move amongst the stars from night to night, making them a challenge sometimes to just find."</p><p>Astronomer Gianluca Masi captured the footage below of Comet ZTF, with its moving background of stars, during a live feed of his telescope observations:</p><div type="image" title="black and white bright comet against moving starry background" height="677" width="1024" msid="97185533" hostid="261"></div><p>"Observing such an 'icy world' is always very fascinating," Masi told Insider via email. "Comet C/2022 E3 ZTF reminds us, with its beauty, that those objects are the most elegant ones up there and we cannot simply miss the opportunity to have a look."</p><p>Want to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/green-comet-ztf-viewing-where-when-how-see-2023-1">see the green comet yourself</a>? Go to a place with dark skies, far from city lights, and look to the North before dawn, after the moon has set. Use a telescope if you can, or at least bring binoculars. Unless you're under very, very dark skies, the comet may not be visible to the naked eye.</p><p>According to <a href="https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/new-comet-might-get-bright-enough-for-binoculars/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">EarthSky.org</a>, the comet is carving a path past the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.</p><p>"Keep in mind that the light from a comet is not a bright point, but a fuzzy, diffuse spot. So, train your eyes to look for the lighter haze on the background sky and you might see it," professional skywatchers at EarthSky wrote.</p><p>They recommend scanning the northern sky with binoculars until you spot the comet, then try to see it with your unaided eye.</p>

See the rare green comet in pictures so you know what to look for in the sky

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Shutterstock</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>Back in February, <a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4888">NASA announced</a> that an asteroid was going to shoot across the sky on March 5 - and that it'd come close enough to actually see through a backyard telescope.</p><p>However, the space agency <a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4888">just revised its calculations</a>. It now expects the rogue space rock to swing by a few days later on March 8 and, to the disappointment of avid skywatchers, it probably won't come close enough to see.</p><p>More importantly: <strong>No, it's not going to hit us</strong>, but there's a chance it could come tantalizingly close to faking us out.</p><p>The rock in question is asteroid 2013 TX68, which swooped within 1.3 million miles of our home planet two years ago. It's coming back again in its orbit around the sun, and this time it might come much, much closer to Earth.</p><p>How close? That's <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/small-asteroid-to-pass-close-to-earth-march-5">hard to say</a>, since astronomers had a limited time to track the rock after its discovery in October 2013.</p><p>Previous calculations suggested it would swing as close as 11,000 miles from Earth or as far as 9 million miles away. But more recent number-crunching suggests it will likely pass within about 3 million miles of Earth.</p><p><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/small-asteroid-to-pass-close-to-earth-march-5">NASA says</a> "there is no possibility" it will impact Earth this time, though there's a slim chance it could come within 15,000 miles from our planet - 16 times closer than the moon is to the earth, and 50% closer than many communications satellites.</p><p>But again, the odds are stacked against the closer pass.</p><p>"Prospects for observing this asteroid, which were not very good to begin with, are now even worse because the asteroid is likely to be farther away, and therefore dimmer than previously believed," Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies said in <a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4888">a press release</a>.</p><p>Here is the asteroid's updated trajectory:</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4888">NASA/JPL-Caltech</a></span></p><p class="caption"> Asteroid 2013 TX68 will pass by Earth on March 8, 2016. It currently poses no threat to Earth now nor in the foreseeable future. </p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Asteroid 2013 TX68 measures about 100 feet in diameter, or roughly the <a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch/index.php#Approaches">size of an airplane</a>, and it's slated to pay us another visit next year on September 28, 2017.</p><p>NASA previously said that there is a small chance that it could hit us at that time (about 1 in 250 million - the same odds of being <a href="http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/03/30/mega-millions-jackpot-10-crazy-things-more-likely-than-hitting-the-winning-numbers/">killed by a falling coconut</a>). Yet their new calculations say that it "cannot impact Earth" in the next 100 years.</p><p>One more thing: Though this asteroid no longer seems to pose a threat to humanity, there are many nefarious objects lurking out there that could level a city or worse. And, as of right now, we have little chance of detecting a smaller yet dangerous near-earth object (NEO) until it's too late.</p><p>The problem is so dire <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/nasa-created-a-new-office-to-handle-it-if-theres-an-asteroid-plummeting-toward-earth-2016-1">NASA recently opened a new office</a> to help coordinate efforts to <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/nasa-asteroid-detection-protection-2015-12">protect the Earth</a>.</p><p>If you're curious about the stats on all of the NEO flybys we do know about, check out <a href="http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/">NASA's Near Earth Object Program page here</a>.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/asteroid-mining-nasa-spacex-space-private-industry-2015-11"> A US Senate-approved space bill would allow companies to own resources mined from asteroids</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="N4YndzeDqiDMEHVp0EvzGJxtrmFjiSID" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

You Searched For "skywatching february" and got 3 results

The Harvest Moon Is Coming

Dina Spector

See the rare green comet in pictures so you know what to look for in the sky

Morgan McFall-Johnsen

An airplane-size asteroid is about to zoom uncomfortably close to Earth

Julia Calderone

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