By the Light of the Moon – Part One

Seeing as tomorrow night is a full moon, I thought this might be a good time to talk about the moon a bit.

Called Luna by the Romans, and Selene or Artemis by the Greeks, it was likely created more than 4.5 billion years ago when a large object collided with the Earth. The impact would have blasted out rocks to orbit around the Earth, which were drawn together and over time melted into one another. As they cooled down, they became the moon.

A Few Interesting Facts About The Moon:

It is 384,400 kilometres from Earth.
Its diameter is 3,476 kilometres.
Its gravitational force causes the rise and fall of the tides of Earth’s oceans.
The moon is moving away from the Earth at the rate of 3.8 cm a year.
You weigh 16.5% less on the moon than you do on Earth.
A total of 382 kilograms of rock samples have been taken from the moon by the Apollo and Luna space programs.
The phases of the moon are caused by the relative positions of the moon, sun, and Earth and occur on a 29.5 day cycle. These phases are:
New Moon
Waxing Crescent Moon
First Quarter Moon
Waxing Gibbous Moon
Full Moon
Waning Gibbous Moon
Last Quarter Moon
Waning Crescent Moon
Crescent is when the moon is less than half illuminated.
Gibbous refers to phases where the moon is more than half illuminated.
Waxing is "growing" or expanding in illumination
Waning is "shrinking" or decreasing in illumination. .

The Harvest Moon is the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox (which September 21). This moon can occur either in September or October. This marks the time of year when crops such as corn, pumpkins, squash, and wild rice are ready to be gathered.

A Blue moon occurs when there are two full moons in a month. The first full moon goes by the name normally assigned to that month’s full moon, but the second one is commonly called a Blue Moon. Blue Moons occur about every 2 ½ years. This year, September’s full moon is the Corn Moon with the first full moon in October being the Harvest Moon and the second full moon being both the Blue Moon and the Hunter’s Moon.

A month is considered to have a Black Moon when there is no full moon at all. This can only occur in the month of February because the month only has 28 (or 29 on a leap year) days. By this definition it only happens once every 19 years. The last Black Moon was in 2014 and the next one is due to occur in 2033.

However, it is also accepted that a Black Moon occurs in a month that has two new moons. These occur approximately every 29 months and the last once was in July, 2019. Rarer still, if you divide the year into seasons there are three new moons to a season, but if there is fourth one, then the third one is considered a Black Moon. This occurs once every 33 months.

Come back next week when I’ll share a bit about the individual months and what their full moon is called.