Sun and Moon / Summer and Winter

The full moon in summer follows the same path across the sky as the sun in winter. The inverse is true, too. The sun in summer follows the same path across the sky as the full moon in winter.

About that full moon on hot, humid summer nights, all big and low and yellowy, Tom Waits sang, “looks like a buttery cueball moon, all melted off to one side — Parkay.” I love that … Parkay margarine starts to liquefy and skew on hot summer nights, and the moon on those very same nights looks like that — relaxed, too moist to hold its shape.

It looks like that because the full moon on summer nights rides low from east to west across the sky, down near the horizon, where you have to look through a lot of air to see it, and moist warm air at that. The further north you are, the stronger the effect.

Of course, the sun sort of looks a little like that on winter days — riding low, fuzzy, yellowish. On those days in the dead of winter, the sun streams sideways into the room and shines on parts of the house you’d forgotten the sun could ever reach. I remember that light especially well from my childhood, I suppose because it came so near Christmas and during the rest of long, house-bound winters.

Now, around midnight in those same winters, the full moon is almost directly overhead, like a bright blue eye, small and alone in the middle of the sky. It strains your neck to look straight up at the full moon in winter – it exposes your neck to the cold, and makes you a little dizzy without a horizon to keep you steady, and the moon is so stark and bright that it’s a little blinding.

In that way, it’s like the sun in summer, straight up and baring down on you from directly overhead around noon. No wonder people have called it merciless – bright, hot, featureless, colorless, and overhead. I think of sunshine in summer days, but not really of the sun itself – it’s too high and bright and dominating to really look into and see. Hart Crane simultaneously described the Manhattan skyline and the sun above it: “a rip-tooth of the sky’s acetylene.”

The sun in summer follows the same path across the sky as the full moon in winter, and visa versa. I’m not sure how to explain why that’s true without waving my hands and drawing a lot of diagrams, so I thought I would try to remind you that its true. Maybe you’ll think about the “why” on your own. And maybe I’ll think of a way to explain the geometry some other time …