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Autumn officially begins Saturday and the Harvest Moon follows a few days later, bringing back one of the big lunar debates: why is the Harvest Moon so huge? This is not it. It's one of those things that your mind has led you to believe. It's all in your head.
And your young children have an advantage over you in this regard. They look at the moon above the horizon and see it as it is: the bright orange harvest moon is not bigger than any other moon and they do not will not be impressed by the lunar hoop.
Related: 2018 Fall Foliage Map: When Fall Leaves Peak in Illinois
Freaky, huh?
According to researchers in the United Kingdom, when the context is misleading, as is the case with the Harvest Moon illusion, adults see the world less well than as children.
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Among children under 7, what surrounds them does not change what they see right in front of them. They still live in a world where you see what you see.
The visual attention system adds context to determine the size of an object or thing. When things are far away, they are usually surrounded by small things and objects both small and close are surrounded by larger objects.
But even if their eyes tell them that two objects are the same size, adults recalibrate quickly when asked to reach them, according to a study suggesting that there are two distinct pathways of vision in the brain. One is used to identify the objects, the other for the action.
Here is a little more to help you understand:
This fascination aside, the truth about Monday's Harvest Moon, is that even though it looks like an oversized orange beach ball, it will actually be a little smaller than the full moon. The illusion of Ebbinghaus explains how much the Harvest Moon looks great, but what makes it look orange?
It's all about timing. The sunset and the rising of the moon occur in an almost perfect synchronicity. And the moon has the same color, it has always been. But the moon and the sun seem reder when they are on the horizon, and we see them on Earth through the maximum thickness of the atmosphere, which absorbs the blue right and transmits the red light. It is from there that comes the orange.
The first full moon after the autumn equinox is always called the harvest moon, that it falls in September or October. The full moon of September is also known as Full Corn Moon, named after the first Native Americans, as it marked the time when corn was ready for harvest.
The Harvest Moon will get up at 6:01 pm Central on Monday, September 24th. It turns at 21:52.
By Beth Dalbey, National Patch Staff
(Photo by Matt Cardy / Getty Images
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