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Tonight's the Harvest Moon! The full moon nearest the fall equinox is known as a harvest moon because the moon provided extra light for harvesting crops. For most of the year moon rise occurs about 50 minutes later each day. Because of the earth's orbital geometry, around the equinoxes the moon rises only about 30 minutes later from day to day. Since a full moon rises at the same time as the sun sets, the sky does not darken quickly for several days around the equinox, allowing for extra time to work in the fields. To see the Harvest Moon, look to the east at sunset tonight.
This evening may be your last chance to see the moon for a couple of days. A semi-complicated weather system, that will bring us an abundance of clouds and rain, is slowly approaching. For the remainder of the day we will have unseasonably warm and humid weather with a high in the upper-80s –90 is not out of the question.
The semi-complicated weather system we mentioned above is going to consist of a cold front that is expected to stall out tonight across upstate New York in a line connecting the SUNY colleges of Plattsburgh, Oswego, Brockport and Fredonia. The front is going to take a couple of days to push through the state. The slow movement means that tomorrow will remain warm. It also means that clouds, along with the chance of rain, will slowly increase during the day. The chance of rain gets much greater tomorrow night as a series of disturbances surf northeastward along the frontal boundary. Thursday night is looking showery and thunderstormy. A possible spanner in the works is a potential tropical depression forming over the Bahamas and heading our way.
The rain will probably linger through Friday morning. Cooler, drier air is on tap for the weekend. Clear skies and temperatures in the lower-70s should be great weather for the Atlantic Antic, DUMBO Arts Festival, as well as for the Mets and Giants games.
Full moon photo from NASA.
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It's also the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival!!! Eat moon cakes!
I have delighted for years about the way the Harvest moon comes over Thompson Sq. Park. It always has given me a "what the hell is that?!!" moment before I realized it was the rising moon. Its HUGE and beautiful, especially before it climbs very high into the sky.
Thanks, Joe for this tidbit of astronomical trivia. Now please explain why scientists keep saying that the huge moon on the horizon is just a mental (not even an optical) illusion.
With all due respect... when you write a sentence like "For most of the year moon rise occurs about 50 minutes later each day", it sounds like the time of the moon rise varies by 50 minutes every day from the previous day's moon rise throughout the year. That would make the moon rise at impossible times like 4 AM or at 2pm once every month!
What you should have written, when copying that sentence from wikipedia (without the preceding one, which put it in the proper context), was that for most of the year the moon rise occurs about 50 minutes AFTER THE SUN SETS.
- E.
E - wha? the moon DOES rise at funky times like 4am or 2 pm once a month. just not the FULL moon.
waning, waxing; man, those rise times are everywhere. the moon is positively loony about them risin' times.
or is it you who needs to read wikipedia a little more closely (a science book might be even better...)?
No, the moon rises about fifty minutes later each day as its revolution around the earth takes a little more than 24 hours. There is nothing impossible about a late night or midday moon rise. A week from tonight the moonrise will be at 11:56 p.m. Three days later it will rise at 2:15 a.m.
If the moon rose 50 minutes after sunset each day there would always be a nearly full moon.
Whoops, in my haste I got the moon going around the earth part wrong! The moon takes about 27 days to go around the earth. Because the earth is going around the sun, it takes the moon a little more than 29 days to have the same location with respect to the sun. That difference is about 13 angular degrees per day, which works out to about 50 minutes.
Whatever.
Shine on shine on Harvest moon up in the sky...
I know th emoon is made of cheese because my father told me that back in the fifites, but what kind of cheese is the Harvest moon made of?
so it's a FULL MOON tonght?