The Moon

When I grew up I remember playing outside at night with the moon as the night light of the evening’s fun; or regretting the moon when I was looking for shooting stars.

The moon is a constant object in movies, books, songs, art and poetry.  Horror movies have to have a moon.  Many songs have the word moon in the title let alone as in the lyrics.  Van Gogh’s Starry Night painting has a crescent moon.  The website Poets.org had a whole list of poems with the moon in them.

Phases of the Moon

The moon is waxing when it is going from the new moon to full moon.  The moon is waning when it is going from full moon to new moon.  The moon has eight lunar phases in order as follows:

• new moon,
• waxing crescent,
• first quarter,
• waxing gibbous,
• full moon,
• waning gibbous,
• third quarter,
• waning crescent.

The cycle repeats every 29.5 days which is about once a month.  I thought it repeated every 28 days but I was wrong.

Full Moon Names

Each full moon has a name.  The names are as follows:

• January: Wolf Moon,
• February: Snow Moon (Carter),
• March: Worm Moon (Carter),
• April: Pink Moon,
• May: Flower Moon (Carter),
• June: Strawberry Moon,
• July: Buck Moon (Carter),
• August: Sturgeon Moon (Carter),
• September: Harvest Moon,
• October: Hunter’s Moon,
• November: Beaver Moon (Carter),
• December: Cold Moon (January’s name per Carter).

Many of the above common names are taken from a book by Jonathan Carver called, Travels through the interior parts of North-America in the years 1766, 1767, and 1768.