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General Weather/Earth Sciences Topics => Earth Sciences => Topic started by: HailHunter on January 29, 2010, 06:40:47 PM
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Don't know if this belongs under the Earth science section, but I thought I might be able to stretch into it. Yahoo in association with Space.com ran a story this morning (January 29th) about "tonight's" wolf moon. Here's the problem; the wolf moon isn't until tomorrow night.
The specialty of this month's full moon is that it will be the biggest and brightest of the year, and offer amateur astronomers a chance to see the moon up close and personal without the use of a telescope.
After double checking a couple of different sources, I have verified that the story was put up a day too early, and that this is a huge blunder for the folks who are actually supposed to know this stuff. The Wolf Moon will be tomorrow (Saturday, January 30th) night.
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I'll bet someone is red-faced! :oops:
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I guess it depends on your time zone, eh?
According to http://dawnsun.net/astro/moon/, the January Full Moon becomes full on 30 January 2010, 06:19 GMT. My time zone is PST, which is GMT -8 hours, so here the moon becomes full 29 January 2010, 10:19 PST.
What sources did you check, what TZ did you use, and what math did you do? Indeed, it becomes full at 1:19 AM EST 30 Jan 2010, and 12:19 AM CST 30 Jan 2010, but 11:19 MST 29 Jan 2010, and, as noted, 10:19 PM PST...
And then there's AK and HI...
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Guess we get just before and just after the the peak fullness because 06:19Z puts it at 13:19 here. The skies are really clear today and if it's the same tonight I may have to get the scope and camera out for it.
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In addition to my wall calendar, I also went to several moon charts online including the farmer's almanac (old school I know.)
Though, it does make sense, if you are getting down to brass tacks, that the peak fullness would still be the 30th even if it was technically the overnight hours of January 29th. That's just bloody well confusing.
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All I know is I went out earlier - about 9PM with a cold, crystal clear sky and that thing was BRIGHT!
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Nothing here but black and wet falling from sky
John
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Same here, was all set up with my tripod and camera for a nice moon-set this morning and nothing but FOG... :-(