Grab a lawn chair, a scarf and a six-pack: tonight, when you look up, you’ll see a bright orange Hunter’s Moon.
As it emerges over the horizon come sunset this evening (October 12), it should appear luminously coloured.
A Hunter’s Moon is the name given to lunar sensation of a full moon appearing in October.
Yesterday, for folks in the UK, the moon was only around 90 per cent illuminated – but over the course of tonight and tomorrow, it’ll slowly fill out before reaching its peak at around 22.07 (on October 13).
For sky-gazers on this side of the pond, the full moon will reach its peak around three hours after sunset/moonrise.
However, according to Forbes, this month’s Hunter’s Moon will also appear to be particularly small, at just 14 percent the size of the average full moon.
This isn’t always the case for Hunter’s Moons – it just so happens that this year, the moon is particularly far away, just 400,000 km from earth.
But why is it called a Hunter’s Moon? Apparently, it’s named after the hunts carried out in preparation for winter.
As per The Express, the Old Farmer’s Almanac said:
Some folks believe that this Full Moon was called the Full Hunter’s Moon because it signalled the time to go hunting in preparation for winter.
Since the harvesters had recently reaped the fields under the Harvest Moon, hunters could easily see the fattened deer and other animals that had come out to glean – and the foxes and wolves that had come out to prey on them.
According to the almanac, the term ‘Hunter’s Moon’ was coined back in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1710 – it’s also known as a Harvest Moon, which is also the closest full moon to the Autumn Equinox.
This means the Harvest Moon can appear in September or October, while the Hunter’s Moon can appear in either October or November.
There’s an amazing number of names for types of full moons throughout the year. As per the In January it’s a Wolf Moon, in Feburary it’s a Snow Moon, in March it’s a Worm Moon, in April it’s a Pink Moon, in May it’s a Flower Moon and in June it’s a Strawberry Moon.
Heading into the second half of the year, in July it’s a Buck Moon, in August it’s s Sturgeon Moon, in September it’s a Full Corn Moon, in October it’s a Hunter’s Moon, in November it’s a Beaver’s Moon and in December it’s a Cold Moon.
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.