Tonight, December 30, 2020, we will experience the last full moon of the year. This full moon is called “Full Night Moon” or “Cold Full Moon”, while its brightness reaches 100%. However, as early as the night of Tuesday, December 29, we got the first taste, as the moon was almost full, with a brightness that reached almost 98%.

Known as the Cold Moon, the full December moon will be this year’s 13th full moon. NASA says the moon will appear full from Monday evening through Thursday morning.

The Cold Moon has been called several names throughout centuries: Cold Full Moon, known by some Native American tribes as the Long Night Moon, or the Moon Before Yule (from the Anglo-Saxon lunar calendar).

According to NASA, the moon is also referred to as the Wolf Moon because some Native American tribes would hear packs of wolves howling amid the cold and deep snows of winter.

“In the 29.5 days that the Moon takes to orbit the Earth, it completes a rotation around its axis and is the reason that the inhabitants of our planet cannot enjoy the ‘other side’ of the moon,” Mr. Antonis Itsios stated to the Athens News Agency, adding that we are referring to” the ‘other’ side and not the ‘dark’ side because there is no permanent dark side.”

“The Sun”, he explains, “during the lunar month, successively illuminates the entire surface of the orbit around the axis of the Moon and therefore, at all times it is illuminated in half, regardless of whether we do not see part of the hemisphere that receives sunlight”.

There are many beliefs and misconceptions that speak of… madness on full moon days (lunar eclipse), more accidents and disasters, increased fertility on the full moon, or that the eclipses of the sun or moon are bad omens. It is no coincidence that in some languages Monday has a name associated with the Moon, such as Monday (Moon Day) in English, Lundi (from Latin Luna) in French, or Montag in German” notes Mr. Itsios.

Source: NASA - protothema