Have you noticed the change? I sure have. I’m still amazed when I walk outside at 5 in the evening and it’s still light. We’re gaining about two to three minutes of daylight every day right now. And over the next month, the sun will be up about 90 minutes longer than right now. That’s a trend I look forward to all year.
But tonight, if we get a break in the clouds, don’t watch for the sunset. Instead, watch for the moonrise. Because it’s the biggest full moon of the year. Actually, the moon doesn’t change size. But tonight’s full moon will look about 14 percent wider and about 30 percent brighter than other full moons during the course of the year.
This is what’s known as perigee, the time when the moon is closer to us than any other time of the year. And that makes it appear bigger and brighter than other full moons. The reason this happens is because the lunar orbit is not a circle. Instead, it’s an ellipse, that looks like kind of a wobbly circle, allowing the moon to be at its closest right now.
Tonight’s moon, by the way, is the full Wolf Moon. This is supposedly because of wolf packs howling in the deep winter snow. They howled hungrily outside Native American villages across the Midwest and that lead to the naming of this moon.
