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i nomi della luna

Full moon names

The full moon, as observed from Earth on a clear night.

It is traditional to assign special names to each full moon of the year, though the rules that determine the name for a given month's full moon has changed over time (e.g., the blue moon). An ancient method of assigning names is based upon seasons and quarters of the year. For instance, the Egg Moon (the full moon before Easter) would be the first moon after March 21, and the Lenten Moon would be the last moon on or before March 21. Modern practice, however, is to assign the traditional names based on the Gregorian calendar month when the full moon falls. This method frequently results in the same name as the older method would, and is far more convenient to use.

The following table gives the traditional English names for each month's full moon, the names given by Algonquian peoples in the northern and eastern United States, other common names, and Hindu.^[10] Note that purnima or pornima is Sanskrit for full moon, which has also become the Malay word for full moon purnama. Full moon days are sacred according to Buddhist tradition and called Uposatha in Pali. For the names of the Uposatha days in Asian Buddhist countries see the article Uposatha.

The term "blue moon" traditionally referred to an extra moon in a season: if a season had four full moons (rather than the more common three), then the third of the four moons was known as a blue moon.

A mistaken definition, that the second full moon in a calendar month is known as a blue moon, became common in parts of the U.S. during the second half of the twentieth century due to a misinterpretation of the Maine Farmers' Almanac in the March 1946 Sky & Telescope magazine; this was corrected in 1999.^[12]

Since there are on the average 12.37 full moons in a year, a "blue moon" must occur on the average every 2.7 years (7 times in the 19 years of the Metonic cycle), by either definition.

l'articolo qui :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_moon#Full_moon_names