The first full moon of the year will light up the night sky this Thursday of January 2021. The full moon will rise at 2:16 pm Miami time.
Yes, that’s right: it will come out during the day and can be seen throughout the night all over the world, unless there are clouds or bad weather.
Each moon has its own name associated with the full moon. In January, it is often called the “Wolf’s Moon,” supposedly inspired by the hungry wolves that howled outside the villages long ago, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac.
Some tribes have described it as the “cold moon” or the “hard moon,” but not the wolf moon, according to a list of full moon names attributed to 29 tribes on the website of the Western Washington University Planetarium.
The closest is the Sioux name for the January full moon, which is “wolves run together.” It is similar to the Cheyenne name for the December full moon, “when wolves run together.”
The list was compiled by Phil Konstantin, a former NASA employee and member of the Cherokee Nation.
Although others have attributed the nickname of the wolf moon to the Algonquin tribe, they refer to the January full moon as “squochee kesos” or “the sun has no strength to thaw.”
Some other names for the January full moon include the bear hunting moon for the Haida tribe in Alaska, “moon of life at its peak” for the Hopi tribe in Arizona, and even “atalka,” which means “stay indoors.” for the Kalapuya tribe in the Pacific Northwest.
As is typical in a normal year, 2021 will also have 12 full moons. (Last year it had 13 full moons, two of which were in October.)
Here are all the full moons that occur this year and their names, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac:
February 27 – Snow Moon
March 28 – Worm Moon
April 26 – Pink Moon
May 26 – Flower Moon
June 24 – Strawberry Moon
July 23 – Moose Moon
August 22 – Sturgeon Moon
September 20 – Harvest Moon
October 20 – Hunter’s Moon
November 19 – Beaver Moon
December 18 – Cold Moon
Be sure to check the other names of these moons as well, attributed to the different American tribes.