The March full moon arrived today, Wednesday the 27th.  When, as in this month, the moment of full moon occurs early in the day, the moon will look more full on the previous evening than on the evening marked on the calendar.  The March full moon was variously known as the Full Sap Moon, the Crow Moon, the Worm Moon, or the Windy Moon by indigenous Americans, while some New England colonists took to calling it the Maple Sugar Moon.  Full moons acquire descriptive names from local custom, weather, and, I suppose, whim, and anyone is free to make up their own.  I can imagine buccaneers looking up into a cool spring sky and announcing the rising of the Shiver Me Timbers Moon.

Lunar soil has strong backscatter properties, which means that, like a traffic sign, it tends to reflect light back in the direction it came from.  A consequence of this is that the full moon, when the moon is fully illuminated by a sun directly behind the observer, is much more than twice as bright as a half moon, when the moon is lit from one side.  Tonight’s full moon will be more than a dozen times brighter than last week’s first quarter moon.  There’s a reason that hunters and harvesters take advantage of a full moon’s light.

Tonight, the Shiver Me Timbers Moon (Arrrgh!) will rise in the east-southeast around 8 pm (EDT).  Following it into the sky is the blue-white star Spica.  The moon will rise about an hour later on the evening of the 28th when it will be below Spica.  By then, the moon will have already lost about 30 percent of its full moon brilliance.

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