Harvest Moon tonight!

Guest Columnist

By André Duvall

For the next several nights, pending clear weather, we have the opportunity to witness one of my favorite annual events of the evening and night skies: the rising of the Harvest Moon, which is the first full moon occurring after the Autumnal Equinox (which fell a week ago today). Tonight (September 29), the moon will rise in its “Full” phase. The exact moment of the full moon is 11:19 Eastern Time, although the moon will for all practical purposes appear full all night long.

The moon tonight

I had to fiddle with my Nikon D60's M (manual) setting to get any detail, and I'm not satisfied with the focus, but, hey, it was my first time trying to photograph the moon.
    Taken about half an hour ago, looking pretty much due east from my front walkway in Mebane, North Carolina.
    Severely cropped, of course; I don't have much in the way of magnification. No hook-up for the Nikon ED50 fieldscope yet (for digiscoping).

Harvest Moon alert

My dear cousin André graced me today with the following information about the upcoming Harvest Moon, and I would like to share it with you:

I'm sending this to a few of you who I think, or who I know, will find it interesting. This weekend, if you have a chance, go outside and view the rising of the full moon. It's my favorite full moon of the year, known as the Harvest Moon. Usually occurring in September, it's the full moon closest to the Autumnal Equinox (first day of fall); this year it's in early October. Unlike most other full moons, which rise almost an hour later each night, the Harvest Moon rises only 25-30 minutes later on successive nights (this happens also, to a lesser degree, for the full moon the following month). The result is that there is not a long period of darkness between sunset and moonrise. In earlier times this allowed farmers to work longer hours in the fields to bring in the harvest; that's why, in moon folklore, it's called the Harvest Moon. Another cool thing about the Harvest Moon is that it sometimes appears brighter and a little larger than the average full moon, based on the earth's position this time of year.
    If you can, go above your local tree (or roof) line, so you can catch it coming up over the horizon. You will be able to see it slowly get brighter and change colors from red to peach to orange to cream, and finally to white if you wait long enough. Then later in the night it will be really bright. Sometimes it's too cloudy or hazy to catch the rising, but we in Arkansas and Tennessee have lucked out this year. The skies should be very clear there this weekend. Be patient, as it's hard to spot at first.
    The calendar lists the full moon as October 4, but since the exact time of the full moon is around 1:00 a.m., this means that the moon will appear fullest Saturday night (October 3, after midnight). On Sunday night it will still be practically a full moon...99%, and will rise exactly when the sun sets.

Rises on Saturday at 6:08 p.m.
Rises on Sunday at 6:38 p.m.

It's a pretty inspiring experience, I think, if you can spare 20-30 minutes to watch.

[The times vary with global position.]

By the way, I read recently that it gets colder in some of the deep craters within craters on the Moon than it does on the planet Pluto. At least Pluto gets some sunlight; those deep craters get none whatsoever.
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Image found readily by googling on "harvest moon photo"....