Tag Full Moon

Too Often In a Blue Moon

Michael Leave a comment

Did you see the “Super Worm Equinox Moon” last night? I saw a moon. It was a nice moon. Big, bright, beautiful in a moonly sort of way. Didn’t see no worms though. I don’t want to get into a “remember when” thing here but…remember when the moon was just the moon. Sometimes it was full. Sometimes you looked up. Sometimes you didn’t. Sometimes you went ahh. The moon was just “The Moon.”

Songs were written about it, couples shared their first kiss under it, now and then a couple got engaged under it, probably some couples got pregnant under it, ghost stories were told in its light, and Halloweens were scarier when it was full that night. For over 4-1/2 billion years it has hung in the sky, orbiting the earth, reflecting sunlight at night so we don’t curse the darkness. And still today we look to it, we wish on it, we wonder how high it is, how far it is, how big it is. And still today we take it for granted.

The moon keeps our days at what we call days. Without the moon’s gravity pulling at the earth and slowing its rotation, a day would be about 6 hours. And you already think there aren’t enough hours in one! The moon power our tides so we don’t become a stagnant pool, keeps the earth’s rotational tilt so we don’t fall over, and keeps the planet spinning smoothly rather than wobbling its way through space.

With all the moon does for us does it not deserve some respect from us? Instead we treat it like an attraction at a carnival.

STEP RIGHT UP,
YES STEP RIGHT UP
AND SEE THE AMAZING,
THE STUPENDOUS,
THE UNBELIEVABLE,
THE ONE, THE ONLY,
THE SUPER WORM EQUINOX MOON!

Only twenty-five cents per person
have your tickets ready
please hold your own tickets
no readmissions
no exchanges
no refunds
this is a limited time offer.

They say, and I suppose they ought to know, this is the last supermoon for 2019. Apparently we’ve had our fill of micromoons for 2019 also. (Oh yes, that’s a thing too.) That means we can all go back to our porches and patios in the evening and listen to the crickets chirp and stare into the sky and not have to worry about whether we might feel foolish tomorrow at work (or worse on Facebook) when we say something like “Wasn’t the moon pretty last night?” and hear in reply “Pretty! Why that was best darned whiskey pourer blood pressure red possum longitudinal moon ever last night!”

Oh, and happy first full day of spring.

Supermoon

Let There Be More Light

Michael 1 Comment

Taking a break from Christmas, Santa Claus, and all things holiday, I’m talking today about a topic nobody can disprove or even debate … at least in the northern hemisphere. Tomorrow is the first day of winter. Yes it will be getting colder over the next several weeks but it also will be getting lighter! No longer will we have to eat dinner in the dark without a trip to Barcelona. No longer will we have to wake up in the dark unless you live north of Barrow. No longer will the dark hours of the day outnumber the daylight hours unless you live in a cave. The world is still working its way around the sun and we have proof!

WinterSoltice

I don’t know what this means but it looks impressive

The winter solstice happens at 5:23pm on December 21 in my neck of the woods, 3:23 after noon or 15:23 as you prefer in Greenwich. (There probably is a really cool way of calculating down to the very second when it actually occurs at your longitude and latitude and probably an even cooler way of figuring what those are. Feel free to search on your own.) Even Mother Nature is excited about this. She has scheduled the Ursalid meteor shower for Friday night, and at double its usual output even! It’s just like a real celebration with fireworks and everything. And to top it all off, there will be a full moon, the Cold Moon or Long Night Moon in Native American lore, on Friday and Saturday. All great things happening up in the sky.

Ok, if you don’t know already I made some assumptions that are flat out wrong. Sunrise won’t start occurring earlier just yet. It takes about 4 weeks for that to happen. (I don’t know why. I used to work in a hospital, not an observatory. I’m sure those people who understand latitude and longitude can help with that too.) And even outside the caves the days are still shorter than the nights and will be until the Vernal Equinox sometime in March but that’s another post. And those meteors. Eh, you’ll probably not get to see much of them with their peak coming along just before dawn on Saturday when that full moon will be its brightest. And that is assuming you’ll get to see anything including the full moon depending on the cloud cover which is one of those things that makes December famous. Remember White Christmas? Where do you think all that white comes from?

But darn it all, the start of winter is here and that means the start of spring is coming and then there will be summer and the pool will be open and I can go sit on the deck with my ice tea and paperback novel and bask in the sun. And nobody is going to disprove or even debate that one either.

Happy Winter!

Fall Fetched Ideas

Michael 5 Comments

Fall arrived two days ago. Up here, north of the Equator fall arrived. In the Southern Hemisphere you’re just getting to spring so you might want to bookmark this and come back to it in 6 months. Yeah, there are a few brave souls south of zero degrees that read this. I was amazed also but thank you my Southern friends.

Anyway, fall rolled in here a little after 9:30 pm (2130 hours to those with 24 hour clocks) (just in case) and that should have been the end of it. “It” could be summer but in this case “it” is the question, “When does fall begin?” Apparently it’s not at the end of summer. Who knew?

This morning I read an article about the upcoming harvest moon, that being the full moon closest to the Autumnal Equinox, which you recall from 3 sentences ago was Saturday evening. Or night depending on your interpretation of a day’s divisions. The full moon closest to that day and time happens tonight, which according to the article signals the start of fall. Hmm.

Three weeks ago Americans celebrated Labor Day which not only commemorates violent confrontation between labor and management but also rocking hot, year-end deals on leftover 2018 model cars and trucks. And…the “unofficial end of summer” and darned if not then by extrapolation, the “unofficial start of fall.” That’s three down.

Starbucks, AKA If We Say So It Must Be So, Inc., released their Pumpkin Spice Latte (PSL to those under 35), which according to Business Insider, “has become an iconic marker of the beginning of autumn.” That’s four.

FloridaFallTo meteorologists, also known as weather guys (or weather people to the more inclusive (which is the more inclusive term for politically correct)), “Meteorological Fall” begins September 1. To football fans (American Football naturally) fall begins with the first high school, college or NFL game of the year, to horse racing enthusiasts the summer ends after the Breeders Cup and by that same extrapolation used above, fall will start the day after (November 4 this year), and to residents of South Florida, fall never comes. We’re up to 5 through 8 if you’re still counting.

And then there are those who mark the change of season with the changing of time as Daylight Saving Time morphs into regular, old, ordinary Time, which itself keeps moving around. The last time I checked, and when I’m planning on changing my clocks, that is the first Sunday of November which is November 4 in 2018. Hey, that’s the same day as the beginning of the Fall of the Horse People. Should it count twice? My post, my rules, I say yes. Number 9.

Personally for me, fall begins the last Sunday of October (this October that’s the 28th) when I pull the battery on the Miata and consign it to the garage until spring (my spring, but that’s a different post).

Ten ways to figure out when fall starts. And in a few months, nobody will think twice about winter other than to question will it never end. Well, give me six months and I’ll see if I can figure out when the first day of spring arrives for 2019. Except for the Southern Hemisphere.

Sorry, you’re still on your own down there, but thanks for reading!