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Ephemeris: 09/24/2026 – The Harvest Moon Effect
This is Ephemeris for Thursday, September 24th. Today the Sun will be up for 12 hours and 3 minutes, setting at 7:36, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:33. The Moon, 2 days before full, will set at 6:18 tomorrow morning.
The full, or nearly full moon, just rising, looks like a large orange pumpkin. The color, like the red of the sunset is caused by the scattering out of blue light by the atmosphere. It can happen at any full moon, not just the Harvest Moon, which will occur on Saturday. What the Moon around the Harvest Moon does do is rise only a little later each evening. This helped the farmers in earlier times effectively extend twilight to bring in the crops. On average the moon rises or sets 50 minutes later each night. However when the Moon is in the part of the sky where it is moving northward as well as eastward, then it rises only a little later each night. Tomorrow’s Moon will rise only 19 minutes later than it will this evening.
The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EDT, UT – 4 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.
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