Just don’t expect it to be “blue”, museum researcher Chang Kuei-lan had said, noting that it would look like any other full moon.
Advertisement
This blue moon is a rare additional full moon in a month; there was a full moon July 2, and there will be an extra one July 31 (today.).
So when the phrase “once in a blue moon” was coined, it meant something so rare you’d be lucky (or unlucky) to see in your lifetime, as stated by NASA’s National Space Science Data Center.
This was later proven to be inaccurate, but calling the second full moon in any month a blue moon stuck.
Under this old formula, the next blue moon will come in 2016. There were two blue moons in three months in 1999. A blue moon takes place around every three years, but that can vary.
But there’s a catch that may disqualify this as a blue moon.
This “third full moon in a season with four full moons” definition for blue moon was still being used routinely by the Maine Farmers’ Almanac into the 1800s and 1900s. And, by the way, for the purists, Friday’s blue moon would not qualify as a “belewe moon”.
The phenomenon was named a bit more unceremoniously – it was officially called a “blue moon” in a 1946 article in Sky and Telescope Magazine, a publication for astronomy enthusiasts, to settle a debate among its readers about its name. This orange tint is the result of fine atmospheric particles (mostly fine airborne dust and water) that “remove” the blue and green wavelengths in white light (scatters is the technically-correct term) and allows the reds, yellows and oranges to pass through.
Advertisement
If you want a true blue moon, you’ll need a volcano.
