Picture of the week: 29/01/24

andrew

February 1

OUR picture highlight this week takes us to the night skies and a couple of spectacular shots of January's Wolf Moon taken by two of our regular contributors.

Clear January skies offer stargazers and nature photographers some great opportunities to turn their cameras skywards, and their shots reflect some of the amazing colour contrasts to be seen at this time of year.

Anne Rixon's stunning shot of the Wolf Moon rising perfectly captures the timeless appeal of that striking vision when the moon shows its "face" to the earth.

TIMELESS APPEAL: January's Wolf Moon PICTURE: Anne Rixon

It also provides a flashback to the same time last year where another of her photographs summed up why the full moon was so significant in past centuries to different civilisations around the world.

Wolf moons and snow moons, blood moons and strawberry moons, harvest moons and worm moons...long before calendars were invented, ancient societies kept track of the months and seasons by studying the moon.

For millennia, mankind has been fascinated by the night sky, all the more vividly lit up in those times before stargazers had to contend with light pollution from cities and the movements of aircraft and satellites.

BLUE MOON: peeping through the clouds PICTURE: Carol Ann Finch

But even contending with those modern challenges didn't stop Carol Ann Finch producing another brilliant shot of the Wolf Moon emerging from the clouds.

The full moon happens about once every 27 days when the moon and the sun are on exactly opposite sides of Earth. The moon looks illuminated because we see the sun's light reflected from it.

The Old Farmer's Almanac explains variations in the names, comparing those of Native American tribes with names imported by colonial settlers.

The term 'wolf moon' is thought to have been coined by Native Americans because of how wolves would howl outside villages during the winter. Different tribes may have had other names for it around the world – spirit moon, goose moon or even bear-hunting moon, for example.

These days, such near-monthly events are popular with photographers around the world hoping for clear skies so that they can stake out some of the most iconic backdrops, from mountains and coastlines to landmarks like Stonehenge and Glastonbury Tor.