                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                              2024 September 20

                             A Hazy Harvest Moon
   Image Credit & Copyright: Petr Horálek / Institute of Physics in Opava

   Explanation: For northern hemisphere dwellers, September's Full Moon
   was the Harvest Moon. On September 17/18 the sunlit lunar nearside
   passed into shadow, just grazing Earth's umbra, the planet's dark,
   central shadow cone, in a partial lunar eclipse. Over the two and half
   hours before dawn a camera fixed to a tripod was used to record this
   series of exposures as the eclipsed Harvest Moon set behind Spiš Castle
   in the hazy morning sky over eastern Slovakia. Famed in festival,
   story, and song, Harvest Moon is just the traditional name of the full
   moon nearest the autumnal equinox. According to lore the name is a
   fitting one. Despite the diminishing daylight hours as the growing
   season drew to a close, farmers could harvest crops by the light of a
   full moon shining on from dusk to dawn. This September's Harvest Moon
   was also known to some as a supermoon, a term becoming a traditional
   name for a full moon near perigee.

                      Tomorrow's picture: light-weekend
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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