Rocktober - On & Off Earth

Rocktober 2025 - On & Off Earth

Of all the months, only Rocktober seems to easily lend itself to a minor name tweak. To add further fun and confusion, is the season Fall or Autumn; are we still in the Harvest season? There is no confusion about the lighting this month, it is fading and fast.

For much of human history the time between summer and winter was just the harvest season. Our tilted globe’s ebb and flow of sunlight driving plant growth and maturity. Grow local, Eat local was the only option. With early Rocktober daylight and darkness hours still of almost equal length, leaves mostly still green and my tomato harvest season still ongoing, the month remains my favorite and one that should beckon us all to get out for a look around our planet.

So… which is it, Autumn or Fall? We use them interchangeably but it seems they are not quite synonymous. A little AI research revealed the Harvest season was the only season between summer and winter. Autumn, from the latin to describe the passing of the year, came into use in the 1300’s to separate the harvest season from the harvest itself. Fall came into use a couple of hundred years later, and as the word implies, was used to better describe the time of falling leaves. The word Rocktober for the 10th month came much later, popularized by Earth Science teachers and rock radio DJ’s.

This year, Rocktober plays host to the Harvest Moon, the full moon closest to the Autumnal Equinox. A quirk in the Earth/Moon alignment near the equinox causes the full moon to rise at or near sunset for 3 or 4 days instead of the usual 50 minutes later each night. Rising at sunset means no real lull in the lighting, allowing the vitally important harvest to continue beyond normal daylight hours. Any night this first week of the month, the bright gibbous moon will light the post-sunset sky, peaking with the Harvest Moon on the 6th. I’ll be checking on the timing of the moon rise the next two nights, as well.

The Last (3rd) Quarter moon sits to the left of Jupiter on the 14th. Has faded to a thin, thin crescent near bright Venus, still the Morning Star, on the 19th. It waxes as a crescent into the evening sky the last week of the month before outshining nearby Saturn on Halloween. In astrology reality, the sun spends the entire month drifting across the vast constellation of Virgo.

Since it is Rocktober, I thought I’d share a recent rock discover in the county. Having only ever seen bedrock in Louisa in a creek or riverbed or quarry I was delighted to see a large outcrop in a friend’s yard, a little east of Cuckoo. With my hand-lens, aided by the state geologic map and guide, I realized it was one of the two ‘granite’ plumes that has wedged its way into the bands of metamorphic rock that underlie most of Louisa county. If you have any bedrock in a yard or field, I’d love to hear about.

Even as the length and angle of the Rocktober sunlight declines and dips lower every day, the trade off in colors reflected to our eyes by that light grows dramatically all month. The spectacle that is the fall leaf color show more than compensates for the duration of light this month. It is not until November, when the colors have faded to brown and the leaves tumbled down that the loss of sunlight startles us into the coming reality of winter. I hope you make it a priority to get out and enjoy the loveliness that is October.

Trying to rain...Today On Earth