The full moon has inspired everything from religious festivals to horror movies and outlandish doomsday conspiracy theories.
And your last chance to see it this year is this week, when UK stargazers hope the snow holds long enough to get a good look at the sphere.
Each lunar cycle lasts just over 29.5 days, meaning that each month the full moon falls on a slightly different date (and sometimes even more than once, a phenomenon known as a “blue moon”).
Here is the exact time of the full moon in December and the full moon calendar for next year.
When is the full moon today?
While the full moon technically stands out Thursday, December 8actually reaching its climax at 4:08 am In Great Britain.
According to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, this time means that on Wednesday evening the moon will appear at its last stage of its greatest size.
When are the full moons in 2023?
Here is the full list of full moons in 2023 and when they peak, according to the Royal Observatory:
- January 6 (23:07)
- February 5 (18:28)
- March 7 (12:40)
- April 6 (5:34)
- May 5 (18:34)
- June 4 (04:41)
- July 3 (12:38)
- August 1 (19:31)
- August 31 (02:35)
- September 29 (10:57)
- October 28 (21:24)
- November 27 (09:16)
- December 27 (00:33)
Why are lunar names so popular now?
The full moon in December is known as the “cold moon” in some regions. Peasant almanacwhich has apparently been declared the gold standard for such questions.
Logically, according to the publication, the name comes from “the name of the Mohawk, which reflects the cold conditions of this time of year, when the cold weather really gets us.”
These lunar names and their supposed meanings have gained currency in recent years, with the designations usually attributed to Indian tribes.
The Farmer’s Almanac first published a list of lunar names in the 1930s:
- January: Wolf Moon
- February: snow moon
- March: Half Moon
- April: pink moon
- May: flower moon
- June: Strawberry Moon
- July: Buck Moon
- August: sturgeon moon
- September: Harvest Moon
- October: Hunter’s Moon
- November: beaver moon
- December: cold moon
They seem to have become more popular since the 2014 lunar eclipse – a phenomenon commonly known as the “blood moon” because it gives the moon a reddish tint – sparked interest in such romanticized names.
According to Laura Redish, director and co-founder of Native Languages of the Americas, there is no standardized Native American calendar, although NASA claims that these names originated from the Algonquian tribe, which is part of a larger cultural language group called the Algonquian. .
According to a list published by the Council of Tribes of the Algonquian Nation in 2005, some of the common names such as “Strawberry Moon” and “Harvest Moon” appear to be Algonquian.
Others, such as the “wolf moon”, are not – the tribe apparently referred to January as “the long lunar month”.
Different tribes used different calendars, Ms. Redish said, and a number of calendars appear to have been searched for common names, while some of the popular nicknames are essentially inventions.
What Peasant almanac says the names “come from a variety of places, including Native American, colonial American, and European sources.”
Source: I News
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