Moon Monday - Waxing Gibbous Moon on November 24th 2020

Happy Full Mourning Moon! Yes, today at 4:30am my time, the moon turned full (and it’s also refereed to as the Beaver Moon, Frosty Moon, and on some occasions depending on timing, the Hunter’s moon) and there was a lunar eclipse to boot! I’m hoping to get outside with my camera tonight, but the weather reports aren’t looking promising. However, I did get outside almost a week ago, and got a bunch of shots of the Waxing Gibbous Moon on November 24th 2020 to share today.

Before I get started though, I also wanted to shout out that today is also my mother’s birthday. While it wasn’t terribly strange not seeing her for Thanksgiving (we’ve had a few times in recent years we weren’t able to get together because of weather/illness/both), it’s still heart hurty that we can’t just all jump in the car and take the 70 mile drive to see her, thanks to Covid and our car (yes, it’s STILL giving us issues all these months later). But mom, know that we’re all thinking of you today and wishing you the happiest of birthdays. Love you! ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

On a different note, I wanted to remind my blockchain friends that tomorrow (or later today, depending on your time zone) is the next Hive Power Up Day. According to the countdown clock running on the @hivebuzz site, at the time I’m posting this, there will be just over 6 hours until it starts – check out my announcement post from last week, or stay tuned for my upcoming Welcome to HivePUD post at 8pm my time (Eastern Standard… or is it now Daylight?) for more info.

Last thing – today is officially the last day of HiveBloPoMo and NaBloPoMo (Hive and National Blog Posting Months). I can’t believe the month has already gone by! This post makes my 30th daily (with a few extras on Hive), so I’ve completed the challenge. I plan to do a wrap up post on Wednesday to talk about how it all went (spoiler alert – it went pretty well! 😂 ).

So, back to the moon – what is a Waxing Gibbous moon? Here’s a great explanation from the Moon Giant website –

Waxing Gibbous Phase

The Waxing Gibbous on November 24 has an illumination of 72%. This is the percentage of the Moon illuminated by the Sun. The illumination is constantly changing and can vary up to 10% a day. On November 24 the Moon is 9.48 days old. This refers to how many days it has been since the last New Moon. It takes 29.53 days for the Moon to orbit the Earth and go through the lunar cycle of all 8 Moon phases.

Also, while the moniker of today’s full moon seems a bit depressing, I actually like this explanation of the name that I found on Refinery29 (of all places) back in 2015. The article is called, Why You Should Care About Tomorrow’s Full Moon by Sara Coughlin, and it looks like she updated it for 2016. Here’s the bit I found the most intriguing –

While its placement varies, November’s full moon is always a signal of the changes to come; as the last full moon before the Winter Solstice, it’s seen as the final bit of light before the darkness of winter. It’s also known as the “Mourning Moon.”

While many modern-day superstitions surround the moon in general, the full version has long been upheld in Paganism as a time, every month, to reflect. People who follow Pagan traditions spend autumn preparing for the colder months, and the final step in this process is the letting go of old things — the things we must leave behind before we reach the new year. Hence, the “mourning.”

Cleansing rituals, during which you take note of what you don’t want in your life anymore, are commonly conducted in observance of the Mourning Moon. These discarded things can be anything from the most frivolous (a nail-biting habit) to the deeply profound (the grief over a lost loved one). The point is to think of these things one last time before resolving to move on from them. You can make a list and drown it in a jar of water (the element associated with this full moon) or perform a modern adaptation: Put your list in a note on your phone, and then delete it. (We don’t recommend drowning your phone in a jar of water.)

Last bit before the actual pictures – these aren’t filtered in any way. I’ve just reduced the file size, and in some cases tweaked the exposure and/or sharpness a bit. The difference in the sky color comes from zooming in and out, and bumping the exposure up and down. And as almost always, these were taken with my my Nikon affixed to my tripod), in my Durham New Hampshire yard. Oh, and it was around 5pm, as the moon and Mars appeared behind the trees.

Now on to the photos from last week, and hoping to have some full moon shots to share for next week. Fingers crossed!