Full Wolf Moon, Eclipse Livestream: How To Watch In Ohio

CLEVELAND — Friday’s full moon is often referred to as a wolf moon, though the origins of the moniker are unclear. One story is that wolves howled outside early native American tribes’ camps on cold January nights.

There’s a lot of hype surrounding Friday’s full moon, but nope, we won’t see the penumbral lunar eclipse here in Ohio — in fact, the only place you’ll be able to see it in North America is online — but a bright sky beckons if you want to start 2020 off with a howl.

Speaking of howling and moons, did you know that January’s full moon is called the wolf moon? There are at least a couple of theories, which we’ll get into, but if you’re going to howl at the moon, you need to know how to dress.

If you're going to head out into the night, you'll find the weather surprisingly warm. Northeast Ohio is in the middle of an unbelievable warm streak. Saturday is expected to hit a high of 66 degrees. Sure, there will be rain, but for mid-January in Ohio, the temperatures are unprecedented.

You’ll need to know the best times to howl, dance or whatever primordial tradition to celebrate the big, bright orb in the sky. That’s moonrise and moonset. In Ohio, the sun rises by 7:49 a.m. and sets shortly after 5 p.m. Around Cleveland, for example, the sun will rise at 7:52 a.m. but will vacate its place in the sky, for the moon, at 5:15 p.m.

And if you want to get in the mood for all that lunar revelry, check out the penumbral lunar eclipse — an imperfect alignment of the sun, Earth and moon that casts a shadow over the moon’s face — via an online feed from the Virtual Telescope Project, which started Friday morning. The telescope is trained over the skyline of Rome.

So, why is this weekend’s attraction called the wolf moon?

That January’s full moon marks a particularly dangerous time of year when people are more easily transformed into werewolves is the most interesting, though least plausible, theory behind the moniker. Modern authors like Stephen King in “Cycle of the Werewolf” have kept the ancient myth in play.

The more pervasive story is that early Native American tribes began calling it the wolf moon because the animal’s howl penetrated their winter camps on cold January nights. However, scientists told Business Insider says there’s no evidence that wolves or any other member of the canine family behave any differently during a full moon.