Before dawn o' day

We've all known some false dawns when hopes weren't quite realised. They happen more often than we would wish for, certainly more often than once in a blue moon.

There was a blue moon in July this year. An extra full moon. thirteen in the year instead of the usual twelve. All full moons have names ... Harvest Moon, Lenten Moon, the Moon before Yule and so on, so every extra moon has no name but is a blue moon though it's never really blue. Why it's called this isn't really known though there have been some fanciful explanations dating back to the Middle Ages.

The next blue moon will be in 2018.

Not blue

False dawns are easier to see. They occur about an hour before the true sunrise. Many folk will have seen them without realising where the light was coming from, especially at this time of year when people are on the move before the sun is up.

Zodiacal light – or false dawn – is an eerie light extending up from the eastern horizon, before sunrise, in autumn. The light looks like a hazy pyramid of light extending up from the horizon.

Zodiacal light is caused not by the dust in the Earth's atmosphere that causes the colours of the true sunrise or sunset but by space dust .... the zodiacal cloud, a pancake shaped dust cloud out in the solar system. If the night is really dark, no moonlight.. or very little and a cloudless sky, you can see it on the eastern horizon an hour before the true dawn.. 5 a.m. Sleepy-eyed, I had a go. Unfortunately, clouds obscured most of it but it was there -  an eerie light on the eastern horizon, a good hour before the dawn.

A false dawn  more than an hour before sunrise

Red false dawn

Check it out next time you are on the move early. There is an equivalent false dusk in the spring about an hour after sunset.

The light was still there as the clouds parted an hour before sunrise


"The moon was low down and there was a glimmer of the false dawn that comes about an hour before the real one, but the light was very faint..."

Rudyard Kipling - False Dawn