Friday night’s full moon was ‘harvest moon’
A “harvest moon” rose on Friday – it was the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox, which occurs Sept. 22 this year.
In Europe, Africa and Asia the full moon was also a little bit darker, thanks to a penumbral lunar eclipse that began earlier in the day.
The full moon was also a supermoon. Maybe. It’s kind of a controversy.
Astrologer Richard Nolle defined a supermoon, and the term has really taken off. Sometimes it seems as if every moon is a supermoon. (If everything is super, nothing is super.) Nolle said that a supermoon is a new or full moon that occurs when the moon is within 90 percent of its closest approach to Earth in a given orbit.
Long story short, Nolle has a list of all supermoons, and so does the former NASA astrophysicist Fred Espenak, but their lists disagree. Espenak’s list includes an extra supermoon in 2016 – this month’s harvest moon. EarthSky has a great explanation on why these lists differ. Strangely enough, Espenak’s list seems to meet Nolle’s original definition more than Nolle’s list does.
Go figure.
And what is a penumbral lunar eclipse? It occurs when the moon appears to scoot through the lightest portion of Earth’s shadow. Earthlings must remember that our own planet casts a shadow into space. The center of the shadow is the umbra, so when the moon passes through the umbra, we get partial and total lunar eclipses. In this case, the moon sashays through the penumbra; it’s a weaker, lighter shadow. Think archery target: umbra is the center, and the penumbra surrounds it.
As all eclipses belong to a family or series of eclipses, this event belonged to Saros 147 – a fairly young one that started in 1890 – and the series runs through 3134. Friday’s eclipse was the eighth among 70 events. This is the last penumbral eclipse in the series for about 1,000 years. For the first totally awesome total lunar eclipse in this series, circle June 6, 2449, on your calendar.
This story was originally published September 17, 2016 at 11:59 AM with the headline "Friday night’s full moon was ‘harvest moon’."