APOD: The Wolf's Moon (2012 Jan 20)

[APOD Robot]

The Wolf's Moon

Explanation: A Full Moon rising can be a dramatic celestial sight, and Full Moons can have many names. Captured on January 8 from Ötersund, Sweden, this evocative moonrise portrait might make you feel the cold of winter in the north. If you can also imagine wolves howling in the distance then you probably understand why Native Americans would have called it the Wolf Moon, their traditional name for the first Full Moon in January. The photographer reports that no wolves were heard though, as he watched this beautiful Full Moon rise in fading light over the eastern horizon, echoing the yellow color of the setting Sun. Of course, due this year on February 7, the next Full Moon will be the Snow Moon.

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[Beyond]

What Not even one wolf howling for the Wolf's Moon Why that's downright terrible! There sure are a lot of ways that we Asteriskians get mooned at this site. And to make matters worse.... Tomorrow we all get sunburn

[Ann]

It's a nice image, and it's good to see a fellow Swede here, of course!

(But I owe it to a man from France that I already knew about the Wold Moon. Thanks for telling me, Vegastar Carpentier! )

I like the yellow color of the Moon, which really reminds us that the Moon reflects the color of the Sun. In this case, like the caption points out, the Moon reflects the color of the reddened sunset Sun.

As the caption also says, the Wolf Moon is a Moon that shines over a land so cold that the starving wolves come close to where people live, looking for food. Here in Sweden, too many people feel an unreasonable fear and hatred of wolves, and too many wolves get shot. It's really because wolves attack livestock and dogs owned by people living in "wolf territory". Human beings, as far as I know, are virtually immune from wolf attacks.

Speaking of the bitter cold of the time of the Wolf Moon in the north, I'm reminded of the beginning of a beloved 19th century Swedish poem, which begins like this in my own rough translation:

The cold of the midwinter night is severe
the stars they twinkle and glimmer.
All are asleep in their lonely home
Only the gnome is awake.

By the way, the name of the Swedish town is Östersund, which means the Eastern Strait. Here is a picture of it.

Ann

[saturn2]

This image is handsome.
It´s a " yellow" Moon, very interesting.
The cold winter on Earth and the sky the yellow Moon look like " hot "

[mylonite]

All these strange names for the moon (wolf moon, harvest moon, snow moon etc.) are quite baffling to anyone from Australia (like me). We have only one name for the full moon here - the full moon. It's the same moon every month so it gets the same name every month. I wonder if this is a North American custom, or do other cultures give different names to the moon in each month?

[owlice]

Moon names, in Native American and other cultures: http://home.hiwaay.net/~krcool/Astro/moon/moonnames.htm

[orin stepanek]

What Not even one wolf howling for the Wolf's Moon Why that's downright terrible! There sure are a lot of ways that we Asteriskians get mooned at this site. And to make matters worse.... Tomorrow we all get sunburn

As cold as it got this morning: I'll take a little sun right now!

[orin stepanek]

BTW! I like full moon scenes! Kudos to Goran Strand! Oh and this is for Beyond!

Click to view full size image

[biddie67]

I actually heard a pack of wolves howling the other night when I was outside and spotted the rising moon through the tall pines ~~ however these pines weren't the snow-covered beauties in today's APOD ~~ they are the skimpy Southern Pines!

But the wolf pack I heard wasn't from a free-roaming pack. There is a privately run wolf preserve a couple of miles from my home. Sometimes, in the winter when the leaves have fallen, I can occasionally hear them at night ~~ fascinating sound when you don't have to worry about protecting your pets or livestock.

[moonstruck]

Thanks Owlice for posting the link with all the moon names. I had no idea. In fact I was....er...moonstruck

[owlice]

lol, moonstruck! You're welcome, and there are many other links out there with moon names; I just grabbed the first one.

biddie, if you howl at the wolves, they will often howl back.

[mtc]

"Native Americans would have called it the Wolf Moon, their traditional name for the first Full Moon in January"
Did Native Americans traditionally use the 12 month Eropean calendar?

[rstevenson]

Most likely it would have been the first full moon after the shortest day of the year. And not all "Native Americans" would necessarily have named it that. There were many cultures here in North America before the invaders came, not one monolithic culture with one set of beliefs, one language and one scheme for naming moons.

Rob

[jinger]

Moon names, in Native American and other cultures: http://home.hiwaay.net/~krcool/Astro/moon/moonnames.htm

Thanks for the list - I was going to ask if anyone knew all the different moon names. They would make for good songs, as each season has its own essence. (Niel Young wrote Harvest Moon, a great tune)

[owlice]

You're welcome. I think the moon list in the Farmer's Almanac is probably the most popular for North America.

[Chris Peterson]

I like the yellow color of the Moon, which really reminds us that the Moon reflects the color of the Sun. In this case, like the caption points out, the Moon reflects the color of the reddened sunset Sun.

I find that to be a confusing sentence. The Sun, being white, never makes the Moon appear to have any color bias at all. And "reflect" has different meanings, but here can be confused with the usage when discussing a total lunar eclipse, where the Moon most literally is reflecting the red of sunset. In this case, we merely have a Moon illuminated by white light, which is reddened by atmospheric scattering in the last few miles before our eyes, and any "reflection" or "echo" is one of imagination, not physics.

[Beyond]

BTW! I like full moon scenes! Kudos to Goran Strand! Oh and this is for Beyond!

Click to view full size image

ha-ha-ha. Orin, i've been thrown to the wolves a few times, but this is the first time anyone has thrown a wolf at me Nice doggie, nice doggie, SIT!!

[orin stepanek]

When the kids were little; my wife and I took them to the zoo in Omaha! They had some timber wolves there and I was shocked at the size of them. The one was standing on all fours and he was looking at me eyeball to eyeball. He was just as tall as I was. I'm glad he was on the other side of the fence.

[neufer]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[Starswarm Magellan]

Ann, do you hear the wolf whistle in Sweden? Thanks...

[Ann]

Ann, do you hear the wolf whistle in Sweden? Thanks...

The wolf whistle? Not around where I live, that's for sure. I actually didn't know there was such a thing, although it makes sense, since dogs (I think) can hear sounds that we can't. And wolves are of course the original dogs.

Unfortunately, you shouldn't come to Sweden if you want to see wolves. There are some really wolf hating fanatics in this country, and there really aren't many wolves left.

No, the only animals that you should come to Sweden in order to see are moose. They are moderately common here. Back when I was doing a bit of jogging - that was a long time ago - I actually almost ran into one, a female like the one I'm posting here. She had no horns, being a female, but boy, was she a big one.

Ann

[biddie67]

...... biddie, if you howl at the wolves, they will often howl back.

Actually the people that run the preserve have guided tours every couple of weeks into one area of the preserve. One of the features that they have is getting the wolves there to do a pack howl for the tour group by having someone "howl" ~~ sometime they play a recording of a pack howl.

Years ago when I had a pack of 8 dogs, there were a couple of good howlers in it and I could get the group started in a pack howl fairly easily.

Now I'm down to 2 dogs, neither of which howl ~~ they ignore my attempts to start up a pack howl now-a-days!

(( Apologies to all for relating a favorite memory ... ))

[TNT]

This is a really nice image. When I first saw the moon, I thought it was a harvest moon. All this talk about wolves though reminds me of this APOD.

[neufer]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[Beyond]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Ah, wolves of the 2-legged variety. Their 'howl' is a 2-tone whistle. But that was before people started to "moon" other people.
I prefer Happy Days and the 'Fonse'. He operated on 'Cool', just like the light of the moon is cool, so in a sense... the Fonse was coolly 'mooning' everyone.