Moon Rise

Written on Aug 5th 2009. This is one of the posts written in my head and on paper that finally prompted me to take the plunge into blogging, but this one never got posted, till now.

SO... When I was a kid I remember reading in a book characters talking about a moon rise, and how it had all these colors, reds, orange, yellow. It was an off hand comment in the book but I was confused by it cuz I had never seen a moon rise with colors and was confused by what it meant. Ever since then I have sub-consciously and sometimes consciously watch as moons have risen. I have never seen one with colors.

Yesterday on my way home from young women’s I notice a full moon just coming up over the horizon. It was big and full and beautiful and red. I realized that it was red because the sun had just set on the other horizon and there were still reds in the western horizon. The moon was sharing the light from the sunset. As this realization happened I remember the book from eons ago and my long forgotten fascination with moonrises, and I wondered if that was what they had meant. I then had another realization: I figured out a reason that I had missed the reds and oranges of all of my previous moonrises.

If my assumptions are correct, in order for a moon to be red as it is rising it needs to be rising with the sunset. It has been a very long time since a learned anything about the moon cycle, but if memory and observation serve me than that alone takes some timing. Because the moon and the sun do not always rise/set at the same time. The moon can rise at various times of the day. Even with the right timing, Mountains (more specifically a valley) also prevent this unique color sharing between sun and moon, or at least dilute it. By the time the moon peaks over the mountains it is high enough in the sky for the colors to have faded. The moon rises I have seen have been beautiful, but the moon has been clear and white. What’s funny is I’ve noticed red moons coming up before but have never made the connections between my long ago book, or the lack of mountains. It is another wonderful thing living in the Midwest has given me. How grateful I am for small moments like this in life. As much as I love the mountains, and miss the people there I love the chance to live someplace different.

I found this website that had a great technical explanation of a colorful moonrise, and an awesome picture.