Sunday, November 1, 2009

Happy Beaver Moon



Also lovingly called the White Moon, Trading Moon, Sassafras Moon, Moon When Horns Are Broken Off, Dark Moon, Snow Moon, Tree Moon.

Such a nice nearly full moon the trick or treaters had for their Halloween.

Who has hung the moon for you?

http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/hung+the+moon.html

20 comments:

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Hey Sophia!

The moon outside my house is hiding behind the clouds as well as trees. It appears to me like a dark moon.
I am wondering why they call it the Tree moon?

Sophia said...

Mossy, having second thoughts? What was it about your post that made you want to delete it? It was a good post!

Sophia said...

Hi Mania,

I can't find any information online to explain the reason for naming the November full moon the "Tree Moon". If I were to make a guess, I'd say perhaps it's because that is when all the leaves finish falling from the trees.

By the way, I found a site for you that you might like. I found it while I was searching for info on the Tree Moon. While it didn't answer our question it does contain valuable information for a tree lover such as yourself. :)

http://www.houseofakasha.net/treecalender.html

Anonymous said...

Hello Sophia,

It is better not to pointlessly point out faults.

It was a 4 deer moon. That is my personal (and silly) way of measuring the effect of the moon. I count how many dead deer I see on the side of the road on the full moon and that is an indication of the strength of the psychological effects of that moon.

goatman said...

I wonder what the odds are of a moon, any moon around any planet, having the orbital geometry such that the same side of that moon constantly faces the planet.
This has to be a very unusual situation peculiar only to earth and moon.
You don't have to look it up --I was only blue skying,so to speak.

Sophia said...

Hi Mossy,

Your lesson for me comes at a strange time because some hours ago I wrote to our local meteorologist to inform him that he made an error on air - he called this full moon the "Harvest Moon". I told him that this moon isn't the Harvest Moon, but the Beaver Moon. He responded and apologized but immediately I felt I had erred in correcting him. Perhaps I should have let it go. After all, I'm not the kind of person who constantly corrects people's spelling mistakes, so why would I feel compelled to correct our meteorologist? Anyway, I know tonight I made a mistake - I shouldn't have said anything at all. At least I guess not - I'm confused; I don't know if I should correct people or not. I do know that if I had made such a mistake I'd hope that someone would correct me. I don't want to be misinformed.

Anonymous said...

You said it Gman.

I think that if the relationship between the two never changes then the odds are infinitely small, unless there is a factor that we do not know about.

Also strange is the fact that the sun and moon appear to be the same size in the sky.

Anonymous said...

Hello Sophia,

Interesting timing.

Your criticism did not seem as pointless as mine.

Sophia said...

Mossy and Goatman have brought up something I've never thought about before. Why DOES the same side of the moon always face us? So, yes, I definitely had to look it up because I'm usually overwhelmed by curiosity. The Straight Dope has a couple articles about it that explain it much better than I could paraphrase, so I'll just post the links here:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/429/why-does-the-same-side-of-the-moon-always-face-the-earth

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2069/why-does-the-same-side-of-the-moon-always-face-the-earth

Sophia said...

Mossy, I didn't think yours was pointless. In fact, it stimulated my brain into wanting to find out why.

Why?

Why?

Why?

That's my favorite word. I never grew up.

Sophia said...

Gravity and centrifugal force are the two key players, it appears. The moon apparently isn't perfectly round because it's become elongated over time due to earth's gravity. So that elongation has slowed down the rotation of the moon. It is the effect of tides - on earth we see them in the ocean, on the moon it just flat out pulls the beefy part of the moon out. Cool. So, for every revolution around the earth the moon rotates once. Nearly perfect synchronization.

HAHA When I was in college I used to like to watch this funny little video. Mossy and Goatman you two won't be able to see it since you're limited by dial-up but if you ever get a chance to go to the library, bring your headphones and watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9MZNEXrElw

Long live the Spongemonkeys!

Sophia said...

Re: the moon and sun appearing to be the same size - I'm guessing it's all about size and distance. The moon is close and small; the sun is far and large. So due to perspective they appear the same size.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the link Sophia,

So why do they think that the moon and Sun appear to take precisely the same amount of space in the sky? Is that just co-incidence? What are the odds?

Anonymous said...

And why does the moon look so much larger when it is near the horizon, even though in is in fact actually a tiny bit smaller.

Sophia said...

I think that the moon appears large near the horizon because of perspective. The moon looks large in comparison with the items in the horizon, like trees, etc.

I looked up why the sun and moon appear to be the same size and it's all just a coincidence, they say. Here's the link: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070317202552AALOqEc

I love the moon.

Anonymous said...

I suspect that the moon (and sun) appears to be different sizes in different contexts because our perceptions, which we call reality, are largely tailored to our own convenience.

Certain drugs or even exhaustion can cause one to see a given object as different sizes at different times. This seems to me to be the nature of perception, to be subjective.

It is only the fact that we try to fit everything into an imaginary picture of the world that makes perceptions seem consistent and congruent.

Without the need to support an imaginary picture the sun would be a different size every time we look at it because of our changing psychological state.

Sophia said...

Just proof that we shouldn't believe everything we see. Our eyes fool us. So to what extent are we seeing reality? There is more to it than meets the eye.

Boris said...

Dear Sophia,
The Tree Moon is not hanging... She is just buoying happily for us.
And yes, the face of the Moon that we see is smiling.
All the best

Anonymous said...

Hey Sophia,
I like your guess concerning tree moon.

Through the link you shared, I came to know about my birthday tree is birch moon as December is my birthday month.

also see this, and pls let me know about your birthday tree.
http://eecho.blogspot.com/2007/11/astrology-celtic-tree-astrology.html