A Lucky Sky Watcher on the Harvest Moon Day

Your face is like a full moon, a man praises his beloved lady.

Poets have been inspired by the moon in several instances. Not only the poets but also artists, children, students, teachers and the space research scientists are also have been in love with the moon in several instances.

Movement of Moon

The full moon day comes once in 27 days. That means for a moon, one day is 27 days of the earth to have a full rotation. It is because to have a full rotation around the earth, the moon takes 27 days. Movement of the moon around the earth is on an elliptical orbit. The elliptical orbit is also inclined to the Earth's plane and therefore it has the nearest perigee and the farthest apogee points on an ellipse.

Lucky skywatcher

If you have to see the brightest and a beautiful moon, you must be really lucky. Why?
The moon must be visible at the same time you have to be in the right place from which you are doing sky watching. It is so because the moon is rotating around the earth and it does not have its own light. Moon is reflecting the light from the sun to the earth. The time at which you are watching the moon should also be in a correct angle so that you will get a very nice sight.

• The brightest appearing moon must be in the perigee position.
• This sky must be clear, the moon is having the highest light availability from the sun, and the moon will not play hide and seek with you.
• You must be in a place where the moon is visible to you!

So three things must coincide, that is why you must be really very lucky to see a clear full moon which is the brightest and beautiful.

The amazing fact that the lunar surface has hills and craters. Therefore, some stained design is seen on the moon from distant watching.

Blood moon

The blood moon is a red coloured moon. This may be due to the time of lunar eclipse when the sun's rays pass through Earth's atmosphere and reach the moon showing the moon red. The red moon can occur also due to dust in the moon's atmosphere or some other steller phenomena on the full moon day, making the moon appear red.

Super moon

The super moon is the brightest and the largest visible moon on a full moon day. It happens so because the elliptical orbit in which the moon is revolving around the earth is in the closest position to the earth on this full moon day so that the moon appears very bright and the largest. Scientists call this as perigee moon.

Blue moon

It is a special moon sight, but not that it is blue in colour, but that it is the rarest occasion. This comes once in two and a half years. In a calendar month, the full moon day appears twice and the second time appearance is called a blue moon day.

Harvest moon

The harvest moon is the full moon day in the starting of the harvest season. It is the first full moon day in the autumn equinox. For the farmers who are harvesting in the fields, the moon helps by providing light up to the deep night on this day, so that they can continue to harvest in the moonlight (before electric floodlight was utilized for lighting).

Micro moon

The micro moon is opposite of this super moon. That means, on the full moon day the moon is in the farthest location of the elliptical orbit. It is scientifically called as ‘moon in the apogee’. Perigee is 3,62,600 km from the earth and apogee is 4,05,400 km from the earth.

In the year 2019, 14th September you can see a harvest moon which is also a micro moon.

Traditionally, the astrology and the farming operations according to biodynamic farming are done by predicting the lunar position. There is no doubt about moon revolving on an orbit around the earth causes its gravitational pull on the water on earth, with some type of effect on the living organisms. This is the well-known fact of the tides and ebbs happening in the earth’s water bodies such as oceans.

The influence of the moon on human and factors associated with crazy behaviour are referred to as 'lunacy'. According to that school of thought, people go crazy by watching the full moon for long duration and go mad. There are many literary creations and stories around such aspects of the moon watching. So, don't worry, if you could not see due to any unlucky situations, you may try out to be an artist or a poet, and imagine how happy you would have been if you could see its beauty.