Wolf Moon

On top of Cold Mountain the lone round moon
Lights the whole clear cloudless sky
Honor this priceless national treasure
Concealed in five shadows, sunk deep in the flesh.

Hanshan

The last moon of the lunar year, the first moon of the western calendar, and the biggest full moon of the year. Are you looking?

SPACE.com — Full Moon Names for 2009
Jan. 10, 10:27 p.m. EST — Full Wolf Moon. Amid the zero cold and deep snows of midwinter, the wolf packs howled hungrily outside Indian villages. It was also known as the Old Moon or the moon after Yule. In some tribes this was the Full Snow Moon; most applied that name to the next moon. The moon will also be at perigee (its closest point to Earth) on this day, at 6:00 a.m. EST, at a distance of 222,138mi. (357,497 km.) from Earth. Very high ocean tides can be expected from the coincidence of perigee with full moon.

Chinese Lunar New Year

Panj comments:
Ottmar, would you have a source, to find one’s colour as in “brown Dog”? I have been searching and have not been able to find a source, and my curiosity has me tapping my fingers :-)

Tomorrow is the celebration of the lunar new year. Here is a site with info:

2008 Chinese Lunar New Year Day, Zodiac Animals and Horoscope
According to Chinese Lunar calendar, the Chinese New Year Day is the new moon day of the first lunar month. The first lunar month is the second lunar month after the lunar month (11th lunar month) contains Winter Solstice, which is around December 23 in Gregorian calendar (western calendar). As a result, Chinese New Year Day might fall in the second half of January or the first half of February.

Chinese calendar combines lunar, solar and color-animal (Stem-Branch) counting systems. The lunar counting system mainly is to count the lunar month. The solar counting system is to count the year and solar month for agriculture activities. The color animal is to count the every single solar day. At the beginning color animal counts only for the day. Later, Five Element scholars applied color animals on Year and Month cycles.

There are 12 animals, which are Rat ,Cow ,Tiger ,Rabbit ,Dragon ,Snake ,Horse ,Sheep ,Monkey ,Chicken, Dog, Pig, in the counting system. The Chinese calendar needs to assign a unique animal name for each day inside the lunar month. sometimes, Chinese Lunar Calendar needs to add an extra lunar month (Leap Lunar Month) in the cycle to match the speed of the solar cycle. For example, Year 2006, Chinese calendar has two 7th lunar months. A lunar month contains 29 or 30 days. Therefore, Chinese calendar needs 60 different animal names to make every single day unique for the case of leap lunar month.

Calculate your sign here.