Can a New Moon Be Super?

The New Moon is the phase when to the naked eye there is no Moon. The New Moon is when the Sun and Moon are aligned, with the Sun and Earth on opposite sides of the Moon. The alignment of the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth leaves the side of the Moon that faces the Earth in darkness. This is called conjunction or syzygy.

When the Full Moon or New Moon occurs near the Moon’s closest approach to Earth, its perigee, it is often called a Supermoon. How super will this New Moon look to us? Not super at all. Tonight’s Moon, as with any other New Moon, won’t be visible from Earth.

But what is worth noting about tonight is that the dark night skies coincide with the peak of the Ursids meteor shower. (I’ve posted about the Ursids before, so read about them here.) They are a meteor shower that I associate wit the Winter Solstice and Christmas.

The dark sky (though still lots of light pollution here in Paradelle) is also an excellent time to spot Mercury in the night sky.

The Pink Spring Supermoon

You’ll be hearing that this month’s Full Moon is a supermoon. Some people call the April Full Moon a Pink Moon. How super and how pink will it be?

I suppose it depends on how you imagine a supermoon to be but because the Full Moon tonight (April 7) coincides with the moon’s perigee (closest point in the Moon’s monthly orbit to Earth), it’s “super.” Lunar perigee occurs Tuesday at 2:08 p.m. EST, and the peak of the Moon’s fullness is at 10:35 p.m. EST. ’s

Supermoons (that’s not an astronomy term) appear about 7 percent bigger and 15 percent brighter than regular full moons. That might not even be observable to you, but any clear view of the Full Moon is pretty cool.

Will it really look pink? Not really. Light does play tricks on our eyes and sometimes the Moon does look more red/pink or orange, but you’re likely to see the spectacular but regular slightly golden-white glow.

The Pink Moon name comes not from something happening in space but something happening on Earth. For some people in some places, this time of spring is when the eastern and central North American wildflower (Phlox subulata) blooms.

The plant is native to the USA and is widely cultivated. This evergreen perennial makes mats or cushions of hairy, linear leaves with small, five-petaled flowers.  The plant’s common names are mountain or creeping phlox, moss pink or just “pinks” and my mom always called it “mountain pinks.’ I still have plants I took from my childhood home’s rock garden that bloom here in Paradelle.

Though we call them and the Full Moon “pink,” the flowers can be rose, mauve, blue, white, or pink and might bloom anytime from early spring through early summer. It is cultivated as a spreading groundcover and can create a spectacular display when t covers a wide area like a flower carpet.

This Full Moon is also known as the Paschal Moon. “Paschal” means “of or relating to Easter” The timing of its fullness helps the Catholic Church set the date for Easter.

In 325 CE, the Council of Nicaea established that Easter would be held on the first Sunday after the first Full Moon occurring on or after the vernal equinox.  This year, the vernal equinox was a bit early (March 19) and Easter is strongly associated with early spring “rebirth” in nature.

This is the closest to Earth Full Moon of the year. It is also sandwiched between two other supermoons in March and May, so be sure to look up and notice these three supermoons of spring.

Follow the advice of Stephen Hawking, “Look up at the stars, not down at your feet.”

The Shoulder to Shoulder Around the Fire Full Moon

February is the snowiest month of the year in many parts of North America. February 9 is the Full Moon date for 2020. The Snow Moon is the most common name for the second Full Moon of winter.

The Moon enters its full phase early on Sunday morning (2:34 a.m. EST) but last night it would look full and tonight it will be 99% percent illuminated on the East Coast.

This is also considered to be a “supermoon” which is an unofficial name used to describe a larger appearing New Moon or a Full Moon. The appearance of a larger than usual Moon is when either phase occurs at roughly the same time the Moon is nearest Earth in its monthly orbit. That nearest occurrence is properly called perigee.

The Wishram people are Northwest Coast Indians who lived along the north bank of the Columbia River. They named this the Shoulder to Shoulder Around the Fire Moon, and I can easily imagine February as a time to huddle around the fire.

The Cherokee people called it the Bone Moon because animal bones were sometimes their only source of nutrition in the dead of winter.

Some other names for this month’s Full Moon that I have written about include Ice Moon, Hunger Moon, Old Moon,(which can also be in January), Grandfather Moon, and Storm Moon.

Eclipsing the Moon

The eclipse will take place in the constellation of Cancer, just west of the Beehive Cluster.   Animation by Tomruen – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Even people who don’t pay attention to the sky or even notice stars, planets and the Moon’s phases will probably take a look at the total lunar eclipse on January 21, 2019. The media have been talking about it for a few days already and throwing around terms like “Supermoon” and “Blood Moon.”

Here in the Americas, the eclipse will take place between the evening of Sunday, January 20 and the early morning hours of Monday, January 21. This eclipse will be visible in Paradelle and the New York metro area starting at 9:36 pm local time. The Earth’s shadow will be covering the lunar surface until 2:48 am – so plenty of time to get outside to look before bedtime and even more viewing for insomniacs.

The eclipse will be visible in its entirety from North and South America, as well as portions of western Europe and northwest Africa. Observers at locations in Europe and much of Africa will be able to view part of the eclipse before the Moon sets in the early morning (pre-dawn) hours of January 21.

The eclipse will occur at a time when the Moon is closer to Earth (perigee) than at other times and that is where the “super” comes from. It will appear somewhat larger to most viewers.

As with most lunar eclipses, the moon will appear somewhat reddish during the eclipse because of an optical phenomenon (Rayleigh scattering) of sunlight through the Earth’s atmosphere. It’s basically the same reason that we see sunsets as more reddish than the Sun at earlier parts of the day.

If you somehow miss the event, this is the last total lunar eclipse until May 2021.

Moon Moves

a waning “C” crescent and a waxing “D” crescent

I was out last night with a friend who commented that there was a clear “crescent Moon.” People commonly use that term when a sliver of Moon is showing, but there are two versions of the crescent sliver.

The Moon is always waxing (growing in the lit area we see) and waning, and moving closer and farther away from us. It is surprising how many people have never really noticed that the Moon looks like a looks like a “C” crescent, and later looks like a “D” in its waxing phase.

The phases of the Moon as viewed looking southward from the Northern Hemisphere. Each phase would be rotated 180° if seen looking northward from the Southern Hemisphere. The upper part of the diagram is not to scale, as the Moon is much farther from Earth than shown here.

In Hinduism, every part of the cosmos is seen as an action of a god and time is the endless repetition of the same long cycle. In Hindu mythology, Soma represents the god of the Moon.

Soma rides a sky chariot drawn by white horses. Soma was also the name of the elixir of immortality that only the gods can drink. The elixir is stored on the Moon. When the gods drink soma, they draw away from the Moon and it becomes smaller. (I wrote about soma earlier in another context.)

Most people know that the Moon changes its distance from Earth continually because the orbit of the moon is not a perfect circle. It is more like an ellipse, so it will have a point of perigee (closest point to Earth) and apogee (farthest point) each month. Today, May 6, it is at apogee and it is 251,318 miles or 404,457 km away from us.

Back on April 20 perigee, it was  229,108 miles or 368,714 km away. In cosmic terms, a difference of 22,210 miles or 35,743 km is not that much and only astronomers take note of the diference. But occasionally the media will decide to write a story about the “biggest Full Moon of the year” or something similar.

There is a nice animation at time.unitarium.com/moon/ that shows the movement of the Moon in your area and illustrates nicely why we see a Full Moon and how it appears when waxing and waning.  You can set it to any date, so I know that on my next October birthday the Moon will be waxing gibbous and approaching full. Unfortunately, it doesn’t allow you to go back before 2000 or I would take a look at what the Moon was up to when I was born.

The Full Moon This Month Might Be the Closest of Your Lifetime

Comparison of a full moon and a “supermoon” Image: Stefano Sciarpetti

I’ll write more about the full moon of November 14, 2016 tomorrow, but this month’s full moon is the biggest, closest and brightest supermoon of the year. It’s also the closest supermoon since January 26, 1948. It won’t come this close to Earth again until November 25, 2034, so this might be the big one for your lifetime. That’s probably true for me, though I’m hoping to see that next one too!

The Moon will officially look big and full on November 14 at 1352 UTC (9:52 a.m. AST, 8:52 a.m. EST, 7:52 a.m. CST, 6:52 a.m. MST, 5:52 a.m. PST). But in the Americas, the moon is closer to full on the night of November 13.

This is our second of three supermoons this fall. That unscientific but popular name for the “perigee moon” refers to when the moon is at its closest point to Earth in its orbit. If and when a perigee moon coincides with the full moon, the extra-large, brightly-lit moon is known as a supermoon.

It’s worth looking up on November 13 and 14. The Moon will rise in the east around sunset and be highest in the sky around midnight.