April's Biggest & Brightest Full Pink Supermoon 2021

This first of two supermoons in 2021. The Super Pink Moon will not look any shade of pink, but we will tell you why it's called that here.

The moon will be the natural golden color we're used to, and we can watch it fade to a bright white as it soars overhead. This first of two supermoons and will look huge and bright.

The full moon occurs on Monday, April 26 at 11:31PM, and thanks to it being a supermoon, it will look 7% bigger and about 15% brighter than a typical full Moon.

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The Farmers Almanac reports:

This full moon will occur less than 12 hours before perigee, the point in the moon’s orbit when it is closest to Earth, generating large tides worldwide and making this the second of four consecutive supermoons in 2021. Supermoons look about 16% brighter and 7% larger than average (red circle).

April’s full Moon is called the Pink Moon because of a seasonal association with a wildflower native to eastern North America. The Phlox subulata, also known as creeping phlox or moss phlox, also went by the name “moss pink.”

Alternate Names For The April Full Moon:

We love that the Farmers Almanac digs deep to find out what Native Americans and our ancestors call the moon in April.

Breaking Ice Moon (Algonquin)
Moon When the Streams Are Again Navigable (Dakota)
Budding Moon of Plants and Shrubs (Tlingit)
Moon of the Red Grass Appearing (Oglala)
Moon When the Ducks Come Back (Lakota)
Moon When the Geese Lay Eggs (Dakota)
Frog Moon (Cree)
Sucker Moon (Anishinaabe), a time to harvest suckerfish

Farmers say you will get the best results by doing the following springtime chores by the Moon.

From the full Moon through the last quarter by the dark of the Moon is the best time for killing weeds, thinning, pruning, mowing, cutting timber, and planting belowground crops.
The new and first-quarter phases, known as the light of the Moon, is the best time for planting aboveground crops, putting down sod, grafting trees, and
transplanting.

Best Days for activities, based on the Moon’s sign and phase in April:

Plant aboveground crops on 18, 19.
Plant belowground crops on 8, 9.
Setting eggs on 5, 24, 25.
For the best luck fishing, try 11–26.

Northern Lights In Old Forge

It's not really common to see northern lights in Central New York, but photographer Kurt Gardner captured the beautiful conformation of them near Old Forge. We're usually too far south of the North Pole, but sometimes we get lucky.

Auroras are caused by the Sun. The Sun is not only hot and bright, but it's also full of energy and small particles that fall toward Earth. NASA says the protective magnetic field around Earth shields us from most of the energy and particles, and we don't even notice them.

The amount of energy the Sun sends, depends on the streaming solar wind and solar storms. During one kind of solar storm called a coronal mass ejection, the Sun expels a huge bubble of electrified gas that can travel through space at high speeds.

When a solar storm comes toward us, some of the energy and small particles can travel down the magnetic field lines at the north and south poles into Earth's atmosphere. There, the particles interact with gases in our atmosphere resulting in beautiful displays of light in the sky. Oxygen gives off green and red light. Nitrogen glows blue and purple. [NASA]