Last week I published an article about the gnomone in the Duomo di Firenze, which casts an image of the sun onto an indicator incised into the floor of the cathedral at around midday during the period of the summer solstice.

This aroused my curiosity about the phenomenon of the solstice in general, and led me to an interesting article in the independent on-line journal Lettera43 about a peculiarity of this year’s summer solstice, the so called ‘Luna di Fragola’.

Where does this romantic name come from, and what are the characteristics of The strawberry Moon?

Here are some extracts from the article together with my translation, and some highlighted key vocabulary.

La sera del 20 giugno, quando il sole è tramontato, si è verificato un raro fenomeno astronomico. Per la prima volta dal 1967, infatti, il solstizio d’estate è coinciso con la cosiddetta ‘luna di fragola’, detta anche ‘luna rosa’.

On the evening of the 20^th of June, as the sun set, a rare astronomical event took place.
For the first time since 1967, in fact, the summer solstice coincided with the so called ‘strawberry moon’.

Nonostante il nome, il nostro satellite non è apparso né rosa né rosso, ma con un aspetto più “tiepido” del normale. Il romantico soprannome è stato coniato dalle tribù Algonquin del Nord America che credevano che la luna piena di giugno segnalasse l’inizio della stagione per la raccolta delle fragole.

Despite the name, the moon appeared neither pink nor red, but had a warmer than usual aspect. The romantic nickname was coined by the North American Algonquin tribe who believed that the full moon in June signalled the beginning of the strawberry picking season.

La particolare colorazione è dovuta alla luce rifratta dall’atmosfera terrestre che, come un prisma, scompone le frequenze luminose, facendo passare solamente le sfumature più calde.
La coincidenza tra luna piena e solstizio è un evento rarissimo: il satellite non nasce semplicemente con il tramonto del sole, ma gli si oppone perfettamente. La stella arriva infatti al suo picco massimo, mentre il satellite è al punto più basso.

The distinctive colouration is due to the light refracted from the earth’s atmosphere which, like a prism, splits the light waves, allowing only the warmer shades to pass through.
The concurrence between the full moon and the solstice is a very rare event: the moon doesn’t simply rise with the setting of the sun but is perfectly opposite it. In fact, the sun arrives at its peak, whilst the moon is at its lowest point.

Questo comporta che la sua luce sia costretta a passare attraverso un’aria più spessa: è da questa combinazione che nasce la colorazione ambrata. Se si aggiunge un’alta umidità dell’aria, il fenomeno appare ancor più esaltato.

This means that its light is forced to pass through denser air: it’s this combination that gives rise to the amber colouration. If the air is very humid, the phenomenon appears even more enhanced.

Selected Vocabulary

si è verificato: the reflexive form of verificare = to verify, verificarsi (literally: verify itself) meaning to occur, ‘to take place/to happen’

cosiddetta: ‘so called’, this is constructed from the words così (like this) and detto/i/a/e (called), literally: ‘said like this’

il nostro satellite: in Italian, the moon is often called ‘our satellite’

soprannome: ‘nickname’ composed of the words sopra (above/on) and nome (name), i.e. a name describing certain individual characteristics which is added onto the official name.
Soprannomi are particularly common in communities which are dominated by just one or two surnames, such as in Prato di Pòntori, Liguria where almost all the inhabitants have the surname Garibaldi and hence address or refer to each other by means of either personal nicknames or family nicknames.

segnalasse: third person imperfect subjunctive of the verb segnalare = to indicate/announce/signal/report. Here the subjunctive is used due to the preceding use of the hypothetical credevano che = they believed that.

scompone: third person singular of scomporre = to break up/to decompose, literally ‘to take the components (componenti) apart’.

facendo passare: ‘allowing to pass’. Here we have an idiosyncratic use of the verb fare (normally to make/to do) see these articles: Fare Part 1 and Fare Part 2

nasce: third person singular of the verb nascere ‘to be born’. In Italian nascere is often used when we talk about the beginnings of something, e.g. il fiume Magra nasce a Pracchiola = the river Magra begins (rises) at Pracchiola, or l’idea è nata per caso = the idea came about by chance.

gli si oppone: gli = ‘to it/him/her’, and si oppone, from the reflexive verb opporsi = ‘to oppose oneself’, hence gli si oppone = it places itself opposite it

comporta: third person singular of comportare, from the words con = with and portare = bring. Comporta can be translated as: involves, implies, entails. In the sentence above I felt that the best overall translation for the context was simply ‘means’.