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Full Moon Rises for Christmas Day 2015: Viewing Conditions
It's the first time it's happened since 1977, and it won't happen again for a couple of decades.
METRO DETROIT – Look up in the Christmas Eve and Christmas night-time skies and you just might see a full moon peeking through the cloud cover.
If you see it, it will be your last time to see a full moon on Christmas until 2034. The last time the full moon made a Christmas Day appearance was in 1977, The Weather Channel reported.
The experts at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center anticipate a near full moon Christmas Eve with a peak Christmas Day at 6:11 a.m. EST.
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Like full moons in all other months, Native Americans have special names for December’s. The moon is known as the Oak Moon, Cold Moon or Long Nights Moon, according to Space.com. That website points out that the December full moon “rises around sunset and sets around sunrise; this is the only night in the month when the moon is in the sky all night long. The rest of the month, the moon spends at least some time in the daytime sky.”
Conditions for viewing the full moon in the Metro Detroit area aren’t great. Partly cloudy skies are forecast for both nights, according to The National Weather Service.
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Stargazers will find the Christmas full moon isn’t the only reason to look up as the year comes to a close. According to Space.com, “Mercury will be well placed for observation in the western sky about half an hour after sunset.
Patch Editor Sherri Lonon contributed to this report.
» Image via Shutterstock
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