Don't miss the wolf moon, the first full moon of 2025

You’re familiar with a supermoon, a harvest moon, a blue moon. But how about a wolf moon? Spoiler alert: No werewolves are involved.

Amy Ray, a resident astronomer at the Hobby-Eberly telescope at the McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, joined the Standard with details about the first full moon of 2025.

This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:

Texas Standard: The last time we had you on the program, it was to talk about a strawberry moon. Now, here you are again for a wolf moon. What is a wolf moon, exactly?

Amy Ray: So the wolf moon got its name from Native Americans hearing wolves howling on cold January nights.

I mean, nowadays, when much of our work and our home life is spent indoors or otherwise modified by artificial light, this all seems a bit like a novelty, but I guess I can imagine our ancestors being really impacted by the difference of the light of the moon, especially in the winter months here in the Northern Hemisphere when we have shorter days. Is that something you’ve thought about?

I mean, that would make a lot of sense. Any light that you could get in days that are very, very short, as far as daylight goes, would maybe give people a little bit of hope.

I learned something new about a full moon while prepping for this interview – that it’s technically only full for an instant. Is that right?

So, I mean, technically, but full moons, we generally say that they last about three days, because the way we see it from, Earth it to our eyes, it appears full.

All right. So we have we have an opportunity then to see this Wolf Moon for a little while. What are the specifics, the whens and the where’s?

So the full moon is technically on Monday, January 13th, but it will look full on the 12th and on the 14th.

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Is there anything else special in the night sky this week or coming up that we should keep an eye out for?

Well, there is something really exciting about this Wolf Moon coming up on Monday. So on Monday, we have a rare occurrence that is called an occultation of Mars. And so what this is, is Mars is going to disappear behind the full moon for about an hour.

Wow. And this is just a perspective thing, of course, right? How things are aligning. So if you’re looking closely, would you be able to sort of see Mars getting closer to the moon and then disappearing?

Yeah. So it would look like Mars is catching up to the moon and it’ll disappear underneath, or it’ll look like it’s disappearing on the bottom side of the moon. And then about an hour later, it’s going to appear again on the top of the moon.

And is this something we’re going to be able to see just with our naked eyes?

Yeah. So it is going to start at about 7:50 for West Texas and about 8:00 for East Texas. And it’s going to last about an hour. And that’s that Central Time, too.

How interesting. And Mars, as a reminder, I feel like it looks red to the eye, too, right?

Yup, that’s right. It’s going to be very red next to the moon.

How exciting. Do you recommend howling at this moon? Is that one way to celebrate?

Oh, absolutely. Just go out there and let it all out.

I love it. All right. So we mentioned Mars, but I guess it’s a good time to see several planets right now.

Well, there are a couple of things happening. So in the night sky right now, we have six planets that are visible. A lot of people like to call it a “planet parade.” So there are four visible planets. In addition to Mars, Jupiter is going to be visible directly overhead, and then towards the western sky, Venus and Saturn are going to be pretty close together.

But an exciting thing that’s happening on the 17th and 18th of January is Venus and Saturn are going to be about two degrees apart in the night sky. And so if you hold your hand up, that’s about two finger widths apart.We don’t often get to see them that close. So that will be pretty exciting, because you’ll be able to see it with just the naked eye.