September, and with this new month will come some spectacular astronomical events.
A full Corn Moon is set to peak in the early morning hours of Wednesday, September 2, where it will appear ‘opposite’ the Sun (in terms of Earth-based longitude) at approximately 1:22 am EDT.
The moon will appear full from this evening (August 31), and will last for an approximate three days, up until the morning of Thursday, September 3. So it’s a good time to root out your binoculars and look to the skies.
According to NASA:
The Maine Farmer’s Almanac first published Native American names for the full Moons in the 1930s. Over time these names have become widely known and used.
According to this almanac, as the full Moon in September and the last full Moon of summer, the Algonquin tribes in what is now the northeastern USA called this the Corn Moon, as this was the time for gathering their main staple crops of corn, pumpkins, squash, beans, and wild rice.
In Europe, this moon has been given other names, and is sometimes referred to as the Fruit Moon – because of the number of fruits ripening at the end of summer – or the Barley Moon, in reference to the traditional harvesting and threshing of barley at this time of year.
