When it rises this weekend, April’s rare Pink/Paschal Moon will be a micromoon — except that it’s really not pink. But it does let everyone know when to expect the Easter Bunny.
Wyomingites can see the Pink micromoon now; it began Saturday and also is near its peak Sunday. It’s smaller than a normal moon and not a single shade of pink, despite its colorful name.
The moon has remained mostly unchanged for hundreds of millions of years, yet the full moon looks a little different when it appears every month. The variety depends on our perspective and the moon’s slow but steady attempt to escape us.
“The rate at which the moon changes is not on the timescale of a human lifetime,” said Max Gilbraith, planetarium coordinator at the University of Wyoming. “But we see different states of the moon throughout the year, so there’s always something a little different to see each month. No two full moons are the same.”
April Showers, April Flowers?
There’s a name for the full moon of each month of the year. June’s is the Strawberry Moon, August’s is the Sturgeon Moon, and November’s is the Beaver Moon.
They’re not astronomical terms. The origin of the monthly moon names is credited to North America’s colonial period when colonists and Indigenous tribes named the moons to reflect seasonal goings-on.
The aphorism is “April showers bring May flowers,” but April’s Pink Moon is believed to have been named for the growth of “mountain phlox,” the pink wildflower that blooms across the eastern U.S. at the beginning of spring. April showers bring their own flowers.
If that’s too dull a name for you, another American Indian name for April’s full moon is the Breaking Ice Moon. The Anglo-Saxons called it the Egg Moon (a possible reference to the Easter Bunny) and Neo-Pagans called it the Awakening Moon.
Gilbraith said moon names don’t have any scientific significance among astronomers, given that we always see the same moon. Nevertheless, he isn’t surprised to see “Pink Moon” and the other monthly moon names pop up among his peers.
“We might occasionally differentiate between the different moons of the seasons,” he said, “but as far as a modern astrophysics discussion might be concerned, the Wolf Moon, harvest moon and Flower Moon don’t have any input. I’ve never seen them used in a paper.”
The Pink Moon can never be a blue moon, as a blue moon is the second full moon in the span of a month. The Pink Moon is always the first full moon of April, so it can't be blue. That, however, doesn't rule out the possibility of a lunar purple April.
Micromoon
The Pink Moon won’t appear pink when it rises, but there will be something noticeably different about it. It will be the smallest full moon of 2025.
A micromoon occurs when the moon is at its furthest point from Earth — further than 251,655 miles away from the center of our planet. For comparison, the moon’s average distance from Earth is 238,854 miles.
That 20,000-mile difference is enough to make the moon appear between 5% and 9% smaller than an average full moon. Most people won’t notice the difference, but Gilbraith said it’s easy to observe the differences in each month’s full moon.
“But if you were to keep track of the moon every given month, it will look a little bit smaller or bigger, and a little higher or lower in the sky than the last moon,” he said.
The opposite of a micromoon is a supermoon, when the moon appears bigger and brighter than usual. There were several supermoons in 2024, including four in a row between August and November, but we have another six months of waiting before the next supermoon.
“We’ll get our next supermoon on Oct. 6,” Gilbraith said. “Everyone loves a supermoon.”
Drifting Apart
The moon was formed when a Mars-sized protoplanet called Theia collided with Earth around 4.4 billion years ago. The apocalyptic amount of debris from the collision consolidated into a single mass, becoming Earth’s only moon.
After its creation, the moon would have appeared over two times larger than it does today because it was much closer. It hasn’t changed much since then.
There was some volcanism on its surface shortly after it formed, but the moon didn’t have the warmth and mass to maintain that kind of geologic activity. Gilbraith said the “Man on the Moon” has been there for billions of years, as the “face” is a series of basins and craters covered with basalt, the black rock that forms over cooling lava flows.
“Magma came out of cracks on the moon’s surface created by impact craters that punched through the thin surface,” he said. “The moon was still molten then, but we think that process ended a long time ago. But the dark spots on the moon are lava flows from this very early period after the moon’s formation.”
However, the two planetary bodies have been drifting apart ever since. Gilbraith said the moon is steadily putting more distance between itself and us, and at the current rate of separation, we’re running out of time to witness one of the most spectacular celestial events.
“The moon will eventually be too small in the sky to completely cover the disc of the sun,” he said. “Total solar eclipses won't be possible anymore because the moon won’t be close enough to the Earth.”
How much more time do we have to see total solar eclipses? Another seven million years, give or take.
A lack of future solar eclipses won’t mean much to Wyomingites reading this story. The last total solar eclipse over Wyoming occurred on Aug. 21, 2017. There won’t be another until July 3, 2084, and totality will only be visible from Evanston.
“With total solar eclipses, if you can make an effort and travel to see them, you can catch one every nine months or so,” Gilbraith said. “Or you can stand in one spot and get one every 400 years.”
Pedro Paschal Moon?
This year’s Pink Moon is also known as the Paschal Moon. It’s a name not to honor the actor but to determine the ever-changing date of Easter.
In 325 A.D., the Catholic Church determined that Easter Sunday would be celebrated on the first Sunday following April’s full moon. The Latin word for Easter is “Pascha,” thus the Paschal Moon.
April 20 is Easter Sunday in 2025, the first Sunday after the Pink/Paschal Moon, not counting Sunday, April 13, when the full moon will still be visible until it sets at 6:36 a.m. Anyone who doesn’t understand that logic can take it up with the Holy See in Vatican City.
Wyomingites won’t have to work hard to see the Pink Paschal micromoon. Look east after sunset, and it’ll be there.
“There's an exact moment the moon is perfectly full, which is when it’s perfectly opposite of the sun,” Gilbraith said, “but it’ll be at least 99% full.”
He also said that, “It won’t be pink because ‘Pink Moon’ isn’t literal, but we’ll take their word for it.”
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
