2018 Full Moon Calendar

Moon Calendar 2018 photo: efendicafe

The moon shows its full face to Earth once a month. Well, sort of.

In fact, the same side of the moon always faces the planet, but part of it is in shadow. And, in reality most of the time the "full moon" is never perfectly full. Only when the moon, Earth and the sun are perfectly aligned is the moon 100 percent full, and that alignment produces a lunar eclipse. And sometimes — once in a blue moon — the moon is full twice in a month (or four times in a season, depending on which definition you prefer). 

The next full moon of the year will be in February and rise on Feb. 10, a Friday night. It will peak at 7:33 p.m. EST (0033 Saturday morning GMT). The February full moon is known as the Snow Moon, among its other names. 


he first full moon of January occured on Thursday, Jan. 12. It peaked at 6:34 a.m. EST (11:34 Universal Time). The Algonquins of New England called it the Wolf Moon, according to the Farmer's Almanac. Other cultures have different names, including Holiday Moon (Chinese), Cold Moon (Cherokee), Quiet Moon (Celtic) and Rainbow Fish Moon (New Guinea). 

Full moons in 2017

Many cultures have given distinct names to each recurring full moon. The names were applied to the entire month in which each occurred. The Farmer's Almanac lists several names that are commonly used in the United States. The almanac explains that there were some variations in the moon names, but in general, the same ones were used among the Algonquin tribes from New England on west to Lake Superior. European settlers followed their own customs and created some of their own names.

This is when full moons will occur in 2017, according to NASA:

Date Name U.S. East UTC
Jan. 12 Wolf Moon 6:34 a.m. 11:34
Feb. 10 Snow Moon 7:33 p.m. 00:33 (2/11)
Mar. 12 Worm Moon 10:54 a.m. 15:54
Apr. 11 Pink Moon 2:08 a.m. 07:08
May 10 Flower Moon 5:43 p.m. 22:43
June 9 Strawberry Moon 9:10 a.m. 14:10
July 9 Buck Moon 12:07 a.m. 05:07
Aug. 7 Sturgeon Moon 2:11 p.m. 19:11
Sept. 6 Harvest Moon 3:03 a.m. 08:03
Oct. 5 Hunter's Moon 2:40 p.m. 19:40
Nov. 4 Beaver Moon 12:23 a.m. 05:23
Dec. 3 Cold Moon 10:47 a.m. 15:47

Additional full moon names

Other Native American people had different names. In the book "This Day in North American Indian History" (Da Capo Press, 2002), author Phil Konstantin lists more than 50 native peoples and their names for full moons. He also lists them on his website, AmericanIndian.net.

Amateur astronomer Keith Cooley has a brief list of the moon names of other cultures, including Chinese and Celtic, on his website. For example:

Chinese moon names

Month Name                  Month         Name
January Holiday Moon        July  Hungry Ghost Moon
February Budding Moon        August  Harvest Moon
March Sleepy Moon    September  Chrysanthemum Moon
April Peony Moon    October  Kindly Moon
May Dragon Moon           November White Moon
June Lotus Moon             December Bitter Moon

Full moon names often correspond to seasonal markers, so a Harvest Moon occurs at the end of the growing season, in September, and the Cold Moon occurs in frosty December. At least, that's how it works in the Northern Hemisphere.

In the Southern Hemisphere, where the seasons are switched, the Harvest Moon occurs in March and the Cold Moon is in June. According to Earthsky.org, these are common names for full moons south of the equator.

January: Hay Moon, Buck Moon, Thunder Moon, Mead Moon
February (mid-summer): Grain Moon, Sturgeon Moon, Red Moon, Wyrt Moon, Corn Moon, Dog Moon, Barley Moon
March: Harvest Moon, Corn Moon
April: Harvest Moon, Hunter’s Moon, Blood Moon
May: Hunter’s Moon, Beaver Moon, Frost Moon
June: Oak Moon, Cold Moon, Long Night’s Moon
July: Wolf Moon, Old Moon, Ice Moon
August: Snow Moon, Storm Moon, Hunger Moon, Wolf Moon
September: Worm Moon, Lenten Moon, Crow Moon, Sugar Moon, Chaste Moon, Sap Moon
October: Egg Moon, Fish Moon, Seed Moon, Pink Moon, Waking Moon November: Corn Moon, Milk Moon, Flower Moon, Hare Moon December: Strawberry Moon, Honey Moon, Rose Moon

Zodiac Moon Calendar 2017 photo: Astrocal

Just a phase

Here's how a full moon works:

The moon is a sphere that travels once around Earth every 27.3 days. It also takes about 27 days for the moon to rotate on its axis. So, the moon always shows us the same face; there is no single "dark side" of the moon. As the moon revolves around Earth, it is illuminated from varying angles by the sun — what we see when we look at the moon is reflected sunlight. On average, the moon rises about 50 minutes later each day, which means sometimes it rises during daylight and other times during nighttime hours.

Here’s how the moon's phases go:

At new moon, the moon is between Earth and the sun, so that the side of the moon facing toward us receives no direct sunlight, and is lit only by dim sunlight reflected from Earth.

A few days later, as the moon moves around Earth, the side we can see gradually becomes more illuminated by direct sunlight. This thin sliver is called the waxing crescent.

A week after new moon, the moon is 90 degrees away from the sun in the sky and is half-illuminated from our point of view, what we call first quarter because it is about a quarter of the way around Earth.

A few days later, the area of illumination continues to increase. More than half of the moon's face appears to be getting sunlight. This phase is called a waxing gibbous moon.

When the moon has moved 180 degrees from its new moon position, the sun, Earth and the moon form a line. The moon’s disk is as close as it can be to being fully illuminated by the sun, so this is called full moon.

Next, the moon moves until more than half of its face appears to be getting sunlight, but the amount is decreasing. This is the waning gibbous phase.

Days later, the moon has moved another quarter of the way around Earth, to the third quarter position. The sun's light is now shining on the other half of the visible face of the moon.

Next, the moon moves into the waning crescent phase as less than half of its face appears to be getting sunlight, and the amount is decreasing.

Finally, the moon moves back to its new moon starting position. Because the moon’s orbit is not exactly in the same plane as Earth’s orbit around the sun, they rarely are perfectly aligned. Usually the moon passes above or below the sun from our vantage point, but occasionally it passes right in front of the sun, and we get an eclipse of the sun.

Each full moon is calculated to occur at an exact moment, which may or may not be near the time the moon rises where you are. So when a full moon rises, it’s typically doing so some hours before or after the actual time when it’s technically full, but a casual skywatcher won’t notice the difference. In fact, the moon will often look roughly the same on two consecutive nights surrounding the full moon.

Other articles on the same theme:

• Private Moon Landing Set for 2017
• After 20 years of work and billions of dollars spent, the gigantic NASA space telescope is completed. It has gold plated mirrors and is 100 times more powerful than Hubble
• NASA announced the next mission to Mars
• Elon Musk announced great mission on Mars. When it launches and what purpose

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Space. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

The US is close to approving the first ever private Moon mission for 2017.

The US government is set to give approval to California-based space company, Moon Express, to explore the surface of the Moon over a two-week period in 2017.

Moon Express has applied to have its MX-1 lander launch to the Moon next year, land on the surface, and conduct a series of analyses that will help prepare the company for potentially carrying payloads to the Moon in the future. If approved, this would be the first time a private enterprise - not a nation - has launched a mission beyond Earth’s orbit.

So what is this MX-1 lander that could potentially take private enterprise beyond Earth’s orbit for the first time ever?

The precedent that this could set would be huge, potentially opening up space exploration to anyone in the world who has the funds and the expertise, e.g. SpaceX, which just recently announced plans to get to Mars by 2018.

"Moon Express, I think, is paving the way for commercial activity outside of Earth orbit," Mariel Borowitz from the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who is not involved with the company, told the Los Angeles Times.

Reports of the approval are coming from an investigation by Andy Pasztor from The Wall Street Journal, who announced today that the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) - which is responsible for approving all commercial rocket launches - is mulling over the terms.

It could take weeks or even months before the decision is made public, but representatives from Moon Express told Pasztor that they could not elaborate on the "groundbreaking developments", but they were "very optimistic" about the proposal.

The FAA itself disclosed that it is still ironing out the approval process, but it’s working to ensure that a "mechanism is in place that permits emerging commercial space operations, such as the one that Moon Express has publicly commented on".

That sounds pretty promising to us!

Set to launch 2017 on Los Angeles-based company Rocket Lab’s brand new Electron rocket, the MX-1 lander is powered by sunlight and hydrogen peroxide rocket fuel. Because this is essentially just an oxygen enriched water compound, Moon Express is looking into how they could use water on the Moon to supply MX-1 with fuel on its journey back home.

The coffee table-sized lander is equipped with everything it needs to drill into the surface of the Moon, collect samples, and fly them back home for analysis. Moon Express co-founder Bob Richards calls the MX-1 the 'iPhone of space'.

Of particular interest to Moon Express are platinum group metals, rare earth elements, and Helium-3, the latter which could be a safer nuclear fuel alternative, says Samantha Masunaga at the Los Angeles Times.

If the proposal is approved, Moon Express will likely be free to investigate the potential of 'Moon mining', but will still have to adhere to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which stipulates that weapons cannot be tested anywhere beyond Earth’s orbit, and forbids "anyone from sending a mission, robot or human, close to a water source in the fear of contaminating it with life from Earth".

This means if Moon Express plans on using the water ice on the Moon for fuel or other purposes, they’re going to have to be very, very careful about it.

Approvals and treaties aside, we are very excited about where this could take space exploration over the next decade and beyond. Unlike many private companies, Moon Express has the funds to actually get this done, and it could change everything if they do. And just think about it - we're talking 2017, that's next year!

"These are pioneers," Marco Caceres, senior space analyst at the Teal Group, an aerospace and defence analysis company, told the Los Angeles Times. "It might jump-start an industry. It may do nothing because it’s so hard that only that company can do it. It really just takes that first company to be successful."

source: sciencealert