Moon in Mesa Today — Waning Gibbous

Moon in Mesa — Did You Know?

• ·Mesa, Arizona takes its name from the Spanish word for 'table' — the flat-topped volcanic landforms that characterize the eastern Salt River Valley — and the Hohokam people who built extensive canal networks here used lunar cycles to time irrigation releases, a practice whose astronomical precision is celebrated at the Mesa Grande Cultural Park.
• ·Mesa's eastern position in the Phoenix metropolitan area places it adjacent to the Superstition Mountains — a dramatic range of volcanic rhyolite peaks — and the full moon rising over the jagged Superstition ridgeline creates one of the most recognized moonrise silhouettes in the American Southwest, regularly drawing photographers to the Usery Mountain Regional Park viewpoint.
• ·At latitude 33.4°N, Mesa sees the winter full moon reach a maximum altitude of about 80° above the southern horizon, nearly overhead, and the Sonoran Desert's bone-dry air — relative humidity frequently under 15% — ensures the moon appears a pure, brilliant white with no warm-toned atmospheric absorption.