This is the time of the September Equinox, which was once of great importance to farmers at harvest time. Bringing in the harvest before the frost arrived, normally in September or October, was a major challenge. Often farmers needed to keep working on the harvest even after dark.
That’s why the Full Moon closest to the equinox in September, when the moon shone bright just as the sun was setting, was designated as the Harvest Moon. As Neil Young sang: “There’s a full moon rising, let’s go dancing in the light”.
After the Sun and the Moon, the planet Venus is the brightest natural object in the sky. It is also the planet closest to Earth. Over the course of 583 days, known as its synodic period, it moves from the morning sky to the evening sky and back again, in a celestial movement sometimes referred to as dancing.
Venus, the only planet to spin clockwise on its axis, has just begun its regular duty in the sky as the morning star. It can easily be spotted in the eastern sky before sunrise and is right now at its brightest. In a month it will danced the furthest away from the Sun in the morning sky. In April next year it will disappear back into the glare of the Sun and will then re-emerge resplendent in the western sky three months later in July, starting a new dance of seven months as the most prominent evening star.
