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Moon phases.
The next full moon is the wolf moon, the ice moon, the cold moon, the moon after Yule, the long night moon, the Datta Jayanti moon, the Unduvap Poya moon, and the Chang’e moon.
The next full Moon will be Tuesday night, December 29, 2020, appearing opposite the Sun at Earth’s longitude at 10:28 p.m. EST. This is close enough to midnight that the full Moon will be the next day in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), so many calendars will show the full Moon on December 30, 2020. The Moon will appear full for approximately three days around of this hour. , from Monday night to Thursday morning.
In the 1930s, the Maine Farmer’s Almanac began publishing “Indian” names for Full Moons, linking these names to European months. I tie these Moon names to seasons instead of months (for reasons I’ve explained in previous posts), so the names I use will be out of a month from other sources until summer 2021. By season, like the first full Moon of In winter, the Algonquin tribes of what is now the northern and eastern United States called this wolf Luna, from the packs of hungry howling wolves outside the villages amid the cold and deep winter snows. Another name is the Ice Moon. Per month, the full moon in December is called the Cold Moon.
A wolf in Yellowstone National Park. Credit: National Park Service / Jacob Frank
Europeans called this the Moon after Yule, a 3-day winter solstice festival in pre-Christian Europe. In the 10th century, King Haakon I associated Yule with Christmas as part of the Christianization of Norway, and this association has spread to countries that follow European traditions. Another English name for this Moon is Old Moon.
As usual, wearing a suitable celestial outfit is encouraged to celebrate in honor of the full Moon. Stay warm, but take advantage of these first sunsets to get out there, look up, and share the wonders of the sky!
As the closest full moon to the winter solstice, this is the long night moon. The plane of the Moon’s orbit around the Earth almost coincides with the plane of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. When the path of the Sun appears lower in the sky during the year, the path of the full Moon is opposite the Sun appears higher in the sky. For the Washington, DC area, on Tuesday night, December 29, 2020, the moon will rise at 4:32 pm, sunset will be 23 minutes later at 4:55 pm, the moon will reach its Highest point for the night (75.8 degrees above the horizon) just after midnight at 12:15 a.m. on Wednesday morning, sunrise will be 7:26 a.m. and moonset will be 33 minutes later at 7:59 am EST. The Moon will be in the sky for a total of 15 hours 27 minutes, with 14 hours 31 minutes of this when the Sun is down, making Tuesday night to Wednesday morning, December 29-30, 2020, the longest full moon night in the world. year.
For Hindus, this full moon is Datta Jayanti, which commemorates the day of the birth of the Hindu god Dattatreya (Datta). For Sri Lankan Buddhists, this is Unduvap Poya. The Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment by meditating under a Bodhi tree in India. In the 3rd century BC. C., Sangamitta Theri, daughter of Emperor Asoka and founder of an order of Buddhist nuns in Sri Lanka, brought a branch of this tree to Sri Lanka. The young tree was planted in 288 BC. C. by King Devanampiya Tissa in Mahamevnāwa Park in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka, where it still grows today, making it the oldest tree planted by humans with a known planting date.
We could also call this the Chang’e Moon, after the three Chinese lunar landers that launched around this time of year in 2013, 2018, and 2020. These missions are named after the Chinese goddess of the Moon, Chang. ‘e, who lived on the Moon with her pet rabbit, Yutu. The Chang’e 3 lander and its companion Yutu rover launched on December 1 and landed on the Moon on December 14, 2013. The Chang’e 4 lander and its partner Yutu-2 took off on December 7 2018 and landed on January 3, 2019. The Chang’e 5 lunar sample return mission was launched on November 23 (UTC, November 24 in China’s time zone) and returned its samples to Earth on December 16, 2020, humanity’s first lunar sample return since 1976.
In most lunar and lunisolar calendars the months change with the new moon and the full moons fall in the middle of the lunar month. This full moon is the middle of the eleventh month of the Chinese calendar, Tevet in the Hebrew calendar and Jumada al-awwal in the Islamic calendar.
As usual, wearing a suitable celestial outfit is encouraged to celebrate in honor of the full moon. Stay warm, but take advantage of these first sunsets to get out there, look up, and share the wonders of the sky!
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