Super celestial event graces Shelter Island
“Super” was the word for a spectacular night time event Sunday night, with a double-barreled name describing the beauty overhead.
May’s full moon is known as the “Flower Moon,” but it was also a “Blood Moon” for a total lunar eclipse.
According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, “A lunar eclipse occurs when Earth stands directly between the moon and the sun, which results in Earth casting its shadow on the moon. During a total lunar eclipse, the moon is fully obscured by Earth’s shadow, giving the moon a reddish hue. This phenomenon is where the term ‘Blood Moon’ comes from.”
As for the Flower Moon, the Old Farmer notes that it gets its lovely name from the flowering month of May, and is attributed to the Algonquin tribes, of which the Shinnecock are one.
The almanac says that Jonathan Carver, who traveled through the Great Lakes region in the late 1700s, and is the author of “Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America,” stayed with the Naudowessie people, who also named May, “the month of flowers.”
