Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Tuesday, October 11th.  The sun will rise at 7:52.  It’ll be up for 11 hours and 13 minutes, setting at 7:05.   The moon, at full today, will rise at 6:34 this evening.

Tonight’s full moon is the hunter’s moon, and it has some of the characteristics of last month’s Harvest Moon.  That is the moon rises less than the average 50 minutes later each night.  Tomorrow the moon will rose 26 minutes later than tonight.  The moon rotates in the same time that it orbits the earth.  Only the moon’s rotation is constant, but its orbit around the earth is elliptical, and is not at a constant speed.  That causes the moon to wobble a bit.  Tonight the south end of the moon is tilted a bit toward is as is the east or left edge.  This tilt is called libration.  I usually track libration by checking out the position of the small gray sea at the moon’s upper right quadrant called the Sea of Crises.  It’s distance from the moon’s limb or edge is a good indicator of this libration.

* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.