September’s full moon will be high in the sky over Beaufort on Friday the 13th. Also known as the Harvest Moon, it will reach its fullest on Saturday morning, September 14th just past midnight at 12:33am, giving us a spooky night to superstitiously celebrate.
A full moon on Friday the 13th is actually quite rare. The last time the U.S. saw a full moon on Friday the 13th was Oct. 13, 2000. It won’t happen again until Aug. 13, 2049.
As the full moon closest to the autumn equinox, this is also called the Harvest Moon.
It got its name because during the harvest season, farmers sometimes need to work late into the night by the light of the moon. Usually the full moon rises an average of 50 minutes later each night, but for the few nights around the Harvest Moon, the moon seems to rise at nearly the same time: just 25 to 30 minutes later across the northern U.S.
The Harvest Moon is an old European name for this full moon; the Oxford English Dictionary cites the year 1706 for the first published use of the name.
Since the Harvest Moon is not always in September, other European names for the full moon in September are the Fruit Moon, as a number of fruits ripen as the end of summer approaches, or the Barley Moon, from the harvesting and threshing of barley.
In the 1930’s the Maine Farmer’s Almanac first published full Moon names based on names used by the Algonquin tribes of what is now the northern and eastern United States. According to this almanac the full Moon in September or the last full Moon of summer is the Corn Moon, as this was the time for gathering their main staple crops of corn, pumpkins, squash, beans, and wild rice.
