A red Moon for the weekend: the Corn Moon became a Blood Moon
For a few hours on the night of September 7–8, 2025, the familiar full Moon slipped into Earth’s shadow and turned a rusty, brick red. The show belonged mostly to the Eastern regions, where night, clear weather, and timing lined up. If you stepped outside and looked up, you saw the September Corn Moon fade from silver to ember, and then slowly brighten again as it left the shadow.
This wasn’t a trick of light pollution or camera filters. It was a total lunar eclipse, the kind that paints the Moon with a dim, coppery glow—what many call a Blood Moon. Totality is the part of the eclipse when the Moon is fully inside Earth’s darkest shadow, the umbra. That’s when the color change is most dramatic, and it’s when phones and binoculars suddenly make everyone feel like a backyard astronomer.
Why did the East get the better view? Eclipses are global but not universal. You only see them if they happen at night where you are, and if the Moon is above your horizon. This time, the timing favored those longitudes. Elsewhere, people caught only the beginning or the end, or missed it entirely under clouds.
The September full moon goes by many names. In parts of North America, it’s the Corn Moon, tied to late-summer harvests and the weeks when fields are heavy with grain. It’s different from the Harvest Moon, which is the full moon nearest the autumn equinox and can fall in September or October depending on the year. In Europe, older almanacs sometimes called this Moon the Fruit Moon or the Barley Moon, nodding to orchards and grains reaching peak ripeness. The names change, but the theme is the same: this Moon belongs to the hinge between summer and fall.
For skywatchers, 2025 has been busy and it’s not done. There are 12 full moons this year, with three supermoons sprinkled in—those are the ones that happen when the Moon is a bit closer to Earth than average and looks slightly larger and brighter. Not every full moon is a supermoon, and not every supermoon is eclipsed, but calendars do line up now and then in ways that keep photographers up late. The year also features two total lunar eclipses, spaced months apart, giving observers in different places a fair shot at the red glow.
Why the Moon turns red, and why September’s full moon has so many names
Here’s the simple version of the science. The Sun lights the Moon. During a total lunar eclipse, Earth swings directly between them and blocks that sunlight. If our planet had no atmosphere, the Moon would vanish into blackness. But we do have an atmosphere, and it bends and filters sunlight into Earth’s shadow. Blue light scatters out—the same reason daytime skies look blue—while red and orange light survive the trip and spill into the umbra. That red light washes over the Moon and gives it that eerie, campfire glow.
The exact color depends on what’s in our air. Dust, smoke, or volcanic ash can deepen the shade from a dull orange to a dark, almost brownish red. After Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991, for example, a following eclipse looked especially dim because sunlight struggled through the haze. On clear, clean nights, the Moon can look brighter and more tangerine than burgundy.
If you watched this weekend’s eclipse from the East, you might have noticed a slow build-up. First comes a penumbral phase, a subtle shading that’s easy to miss. Then the bite of the umbra takes hold, and the Moon looks as if something is nibbling its edge. Totality follows, and the color emerges. The pace is unhurried; lunar eclipses often stretch over a few hours. Totality itself usually lasts on the order of an hour, give or take, long enough for your eyes to adjust and for clouds to get in the way and drift off again.
Unlike a solar eclipse, you don’t need special glasses. Lunar eclipses are safe to watch with your eyes, binoculars, or a backyard telescope. City dwellers can enjoy them too; streetlights don’t ruin the view the way they do with meteor showers. If your weather cooperated, you had a front-row seat from a balcony, a stoop, or a quiet parking lot.
The Corn Moon’s name sits in a wider web of seasonal markers. Across North America, full moons were named to track food and weather: Wolf, Snow, Worm, Pink, Strawberry, Buck, Sturgeon, Corn, Hunter’s, Beaver, and Cold. The September Corn Moon anchors late-season work—picking, drying, and storing. In parts of Europe, the Fruit Moon marked orchard peaks, and the Barley Moon pointed to grains ready for cutting. These names are practical calendars, tuned to local life long before digital ones ruled our pockets.
And then there’s the Harvest Moon, the one many people think of when they see bright, low full moons hugging the horizon. That title belongs to the full moon closest to the autumn equinox, not to a fixed month. Some years the Corn Moon and the Harvest Moon are the same. Other years, like many in recent memory, they split across September and October. The distinction matters to farmers and folklore, but any full moon near the equinox will rise around sunset for several evenings in a row, keeping fields lit a bit longer at a time of year when every extra minute helps.
Supermoons get a lot of buzz, so here’s the quick take. The Moon’s path around Earth is slightly oval, not a perfect circle. When a full moon happens near the closest point in that path (perigee), it looks bigger and can shine noticeably brighter than a full moon near the farthest point (apogee). The difference isn’t night-and-day obvious, but side-by-side photos make it clear. In 2025, three full moons meet the common “supermoon” cutoff, adding a little drama to the calendar even when there’s no eclipse involved.
Missed this one or had clouds? You’ll get another chance. Total lunar eclipses come in clusters separated by long gaps—astronomers track them using Saros cycles that repeat every 18 years or so. This year includes two totals, months apart, so not everyone needed to hop on a plane to catch the red glow. If your region didn’t line up for this weekend’s show, keep an eye on the next window when night, weather, and timing all play nice where you live.
If you want to be ready next time, a little prep goes a long way:
- Check the local timing so you know when the partial phases and totality start where you are.
- Find a clear, open view of the sky. A park, rooftop, or beach works well.
- Bring binoculars or a small telescope if you have one. They make the copper tones and lunar craters pop.
- For photos, use a tripod and a timer. Start around 1/60 to 1/125 second at ISO 400–800, and adjust as the Moon darkens during totality.
- Dress for the temperature and give your eyes 10–15 minutes to adapt to the lower light.
Events like this live at the crossroads of science and culture. You get the clean geometry of Sun–Earth–Moon lining up just so, and you get the older seasonal rhythms that named this Moon long before anyone wrote down orbital mechanics. The result is simple and striking: a familiar face in the sky, briefly changed, and then back again—part calendar, part clock, part reminder that our planet and its air shape what we see every night.