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This year marks the first “major lunar stasis” since 2006, when the moon’s path moves higher in the sky – appearing to have stopped for people on earth.

Also known as the “lunar solstice,” the event occurs when the inclinations of both the Earth and the moon are at their maximum and will coincide with the summer solstice on Friday evening, June 21 in the Northern Hemisphere.

On this day, the moon will rise and set at its most northeast and northwest points, making it longer in the night sky.

Grand stops of the moon have been long-awaited events throughout history, as structures such as Stonehenge in England and both America’s Chimney Rock and Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks line up perfectly with the moon in the night sky.

Some sky watchers will observe the celestial event from Stonehenge, and several archaeologists plan to check whether the ancient site was built to coincide with the rare lunar event.

And similar spectacles associated with local landmarks in the US will occur during these lunar months at Chimney Rock in Colorado, Hopewell sites in Ohio and Chaco Canyon in New Mexico.

Although the local high points for the great lunar stasis will vary depending on your location on the globe and overnight weather conditions, it has a chance of visibility two nights per month from now until November 2025.

The moon can appear to rise and set at different points on the horizon due to the angles of its orbit and the tilt of the Earth’s axis.

While our entire solar system is essentially flat and most planets, dwarf planets and asteroids orbit in a flat plane or disc called the ecliptic, the Moon’s orbit is at a slightly different angle.

Since the Earth rotates on an axis tilted 23.4 degrees from this plane of the ecliptic, our moon’s orbit is tilted only 5.1 degrees to the ecliptic.

The result is that the moon’s sunrise and sunset points, and thus how much of the Earth it crosses between them, can vary by 57 degrees depending on the year.

A major lunar stasis marks the most extreme of its range: The moon will rise at its highest point in the northeast and set at its highest point in the northwest — and also rise at its highest point in the southeast and set in its highest point in the southwest point.

The Archaeoastronomical Database has built an interactive spreadsheet calculator, video tutorial, and shorter fact sheet on which evenings in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres will enjoy the most extreme moments of major lunar stasis based on the perspective of their longitude and latitude.

But the key summer dates you’ll want to remember if you live in the US or elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere are June 21-22, July 19, and August 15.

These are the main times when the major lunar stasis will coincide with either a full moon or a phase of the moon that is large and bright enough to enjoy, as opposed to an eclipsed full moon.

Those who live near Ohio may want to check out the moonscape this Friday at Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, where it will line up with mounds of earth made thousands of years ago by Native Americans who lived in the Chillicothe area.

This “once-in-a-generation event,” park officials note, will help the visiting public visualize how the people of Hopewell “use their deep knowledge of astronomy to align these geometric figures to the endless cycles of the Sun and Moon, as they travel back and forth across the horizon.’

According to the U.S. Forest Service, which manages the land around Chimney Rock in Colorado, this weekend’s lunar solstice, which marks the summer solstice, won’t be visible in person when passing through these long, tall national monuments.

“The Forest Service and partners are discussing opportunities to share the event through other platforms such as live streaming, still photography and/or video recording in 2024-2025,” federal officials noted in a fact sheet.

“The Ancestral Puebloans of Chimney Rock,” the service noted, “he would see the moonrises gradually shift each year. In time they would notice that at the northernmost point of his multi-year journey, the full moon would rise between the rock pillars.

The office said that despite this historical value, the area will be closed those evenings due to safety concerns, including “potential wildlife encounters such as bears, mountain lions, rattlesnakes.”

But no such restrictions will befall those near Stonehenge in the UK.

Thousands of tourists will flock to Stonehenge in the English countryside this weekend for the summer solstice and lunar solstice to coincide, including some scientists.

A project to investigate Stonehenge’s relationship with the great lunar stasis is being led by experts from the universities of Oxford, Leicester and Bournemouth.

Dr Fabio Silva, senior lecturer in archaeological modeling at Bournemouth University, said that during the great lunar stasis the moon would be aligned with the ancient ‘station stones’ of Stonehenge.

Although only two still stand, the station stones mark the corners of a perfect rectangle with a center point at the exact center of the monument.

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One of the sides of this rectangle appears to point in a southeasterly direction, corresponding to where the moon will rise during a major lunar stasis.

“We want to assess whether this is likely to be accidental or whether it was deliberate,” Dr Silva told MailOnline last April.

“So we want to assess where one should stand, how many people could effectively witness the alignment, whether after sunrise/before sunset the moon will be obscured by other rocks that may diminish the experience, whether moonlight casts shadows inside the circle,” Dr. Silva explained.

“These are the things that, taken together, can help us build an argument for or against these alignments,” the archaeologist said.

Stonehenge was deliberately built to align with the sun at the solstice, according to English Heritage, which manages the site.

It explains: “At Stonehenge on the summer solstice, the sun rises behind the Heel Stone in the north-east of the horizon and its first rays illuminate the heart of Stonehenge.

“Watchers at Stonehenge during the winter solstice, standing at the entrance to the enclosure and facing the center of the stones, can watch the sun set on the southwest horizon.”

Identifying whether the site was built, in part, to mark the moonbeam could help advance one theory as to why the megalith was built: as a giant stone calendar.

Professor Timothy Darvill, an archaeologist at Bournemouth University, believes Stonehenge served as an ancient solar calendar that helped people keep track of the days of the year.

The British researcher behind the theory believes that Stonehenge’s large slabs of sand, called sarsens, represent one day of the month, making the whole place a giant time-keeping device.

But the theory is still hotly contested, with some archaeologists and other scholars describing it as “totally unsubstantiated” and based on “forced interpretations, numerology and unsupported analogies.”