Full Moon - All about this earthly wonder
A full moon can be seen when it is lying on the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun. It is the only time when a lunar eclipse is even possible. A lunar eclipse doesn’t occur every time though because of the tilt of the orbit around the Earth and is depending upon where the Earth’s orbit is around the Sun. More information can be found about it here on this page.
For anyone interested in stargazing or making astronomical observations, it usually isn’t a good time to try and do so when there is a full moon because the bright light that is reflected usually overwhelms the sky and the dimmer light from the stars.
On average, it takes 27.322 days for a complete an orbit around the Earth (without making contact!) and it takes around two more days on top of that to catch up with the Sun. An average number of days between a full moon is about 29, although the number may change here and there by more than a half day. Sometimes from one to the next the number of days can be anywhere between 29.27 and 29.83. The age and size of the full moon in a cycle in under 14 months is called a full moon cycle.
There is some old folklore that is associated with a full moon. You may sometimes hear it mentioned when strange things are happening or people are acting weird although psychologists have found that there is no official evidence of any specific behavior when there is a full moon. In some of their studies, there have been positive effects, in others, there were negative, so it’s inconclusive up to the end. Folklore also gives a special name to each one. Practice over time has assigned their traditional names based on the Gregorian calendar month. For instance, The English names are Wolf, Lenten, Egg, Milk, Flower, Hay, Grain, Fruit, Hunter’s and Harvest. The Native American names given (by Native Americans in the northern and eastern United States) are Snow, Worm, Pink, Strawberry, Buck, Sturgeon, Beaver and Cold. Other names used are Old, Hunger, Crow, Crust, Sugar, Sap, Sprouting Grass, Fish, Corn Planting, Rose, Hot, Thunder, Travel, Dying Grass, Frost and Long Nights.
There are also calendars that are based on the phases of the full moon such as the Islamic and the Chinese calendars. Both of these calendars never begin their months on a full moon. For instance, in the Chinese calendar, it is always in the middle of a month.