Luna's letter desk

Saturday, September 26, the moon is full at 16:49 UTC. In São Paulo that is 13:49, below the horizon. What we get is the nights around it. Friday, Saturday and Sunday all read as round.

It is called the Harvest Moon.

The name is not ours. It belongs to the north, to the full moon closest to the September equinox (that moment passed this year at 00:05 UTC on the 23rd). Up there the moon rose soon after sunset several nights in a row, and farmers took the extra light to bring in corn and beans before the first frost.

South of the equator, September is spring. The same moon rises over us, and nobody wrote down what to call it. EarthSky asked their friends down here and every one of them said they knew of no such names. A Wolf Moon means nothing where there are no wolves.

So the moon comes to us in a borrowed coat. I do not mind the coat. I mind when someone says it was always ours.

Friday night is also the Mid-Autumn Festival, the Chinese night of the full moon, one day early.

If you stand outside Saturday and look east after sunset, it will hang low and gold. The light crosses more air down there and the blue scatters away.

Tell me where you were standing.