Did you catch a glimpse of the moon early Thursday morning? It was the last full moon of the decade.
While the moon has been visible since Tuesday and will remain so through Friday, it reached its fullest Thursday at 12:12 a.m., according to NASA.
Here's some interesting tidbits from NASA about Thursday's moon:
- The Maine Farmer's Almanac first published Indian names for the full Moons in the 1930's. According to this almanac, the Algonquin tribes of what is now the northern and eastern United States named the full Moon in December or the last full Moon of the fall season the Cold Moon, due to the long, cold nights.
- An old European name for this Moon is the Oak Moon, a name that some believe ties back to ancient druid traditions of harvesting mistletoe from oak trees first recorded by the Roman historian Pliny the Elder in the 1st century CE. The term "druid" may derive from the Proto-Indo-European roots for "oak" and "to see," suggesting druid means "oak knower" or "oak-seer."
- Europeans also called this the Moon before Yule. Yule was a 3-day winter solstice festival. In the 10th Century King Haakon I associated Yule with Christmas as part of the Christianization of Norway, and this association is now common throughout Europe.
The next full moon will be on Jan. 10, 2020.
You can read more on NASA's website, here.
