Skywatchers are for the next three nights of treatment, as the full September Corn Moon rises into the sky.
With the autumn equator in late September, this week will be the last full moon of the lunar summer.
It officially completes early Wednesday morning, but from tonight night – and until the next few nights – it will look like a full moon.
To understand some of the stories surrounding the full moon in September, we checked with farmer almanacs and people at NASA who keep an eye on sky events. Here are some of the more interesting ones we found:
# 1 Why Not Harvest Moon: Since the calendar is reversed in September, many people believe that any moon that rises this month should be called the Harvest Moon. The rules of the moon seem a little difficult when it comes to this. The Old Farmer’s Almanac explains it this way:
“The full moon that approaches the autumn equator always takes the name” Harvest Moon “instead of the traditional name – a rule that always puts the Harvest Moon in the month of September. However, when the full moon of September falls at the beginning of the month, the full moon in early October approaches the autumn equator and therefore receives the title Harvest Moon instead. “
# 2 The full moon of September has many names: Full Corn Moon is one of the most common names, but there are a few other handfuls depending on where you live. Because it is the last full moon of summer, the Algonquin species on the east coast call it the Corn Moon, as it stores corn, squash, beans, and other major summer garden crops.
Gordon Johnston also pulled many details about this month’s full moon history on his recent NASA blog:
“European names for this full moon are the fruit moon, as a number of fruits ripen by the end of summer, and barley moon, barley crop and harvest.”
“This full moon corresponds to the Chinese Hungry Ghost Festival. The seventh month of the Chinese calendar is Ghost Month and the fifteenth day of this month (full moon day) is called Ghost Day, on which ghosts and spirits, including dead ancestors, come to visit the living. “
Johnston also gets into a lot of the September Nifty stargazing and Skytchching facts. You can check out his blog here.
# 3 The Celtic practice of calling it the Wine Moon seems more romantic: Michigan’s star-studded historian Mary Stuart Adams’ Interlochan is a regular show on public radio, called “Storyteller’s Night Sky.” In his most recent part, he talks about how the Celts call this moon the Full Wine Moon and give a little bit of its history:
“The reason why this name came to be, which I imagined, is that Wine Moon is so named because the Sun is just located near the constellation of Virgo, where we get the star Vindimetrics. Vindemiatrix is a grape harvester, described as a “fruit-bearing herald”, indicating that the wine conveys a secret message. “
You can listen to the recording of Stuart’s show here.
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