BLUE MOON

A blue moon occurs about once every two or three years, and no, they are not really blue in color.

A blue moon is really just a full moon that appears where it shouldn't. An extra moon you might say.

  Full moons usually occur once a month or three per each season, but the lunar cycle works a little different than our calendar cycle, so an extra full moon pops up every 2.7154 years. It is this second full moon in a calendar month, or the fourth full moon to appear within a season, that is referred to as a blue moon.

A blue moon can refer to the third full moon in a season with four full moons. Most years have twelve full moons that occur approximately monthly. In addition to those twelve full lunar cycles, each solar calendar year contains roughly eleven days more than the lunar year of 12 lunations. The extra days accumulate, so every two or three years (7 times in the 19-year Metonic cycle), there is an extra full moon. Lunisolar calendars have rules about when to insert such an intercalary orembolismic ("leap") month, and what name it is given; e.g. in the Hebrew calendar the month Adar is duplicated. The term "blue moon" comes from folklore. Different traditions and conventions place the extra "blue" full moon at different times in the year.

• In calculating the dates for Lent and Easter, the Clergy identify the Lent Moon. It is thought that historically when the moon's timing was too early, they named an earlier moon as a "betrayer moon" (belewe moon), thus the Lent moon came at its expected time.
• Folklore gave each moon a name according to its time of year. A moon that came too early had no folk name, and was called a blue moon, retaining the correct seasonal timings for future moons.
• The Farmers' Almanac defined blue moon as an extra full moon that occurred in a season; one season was normally three full moons. If a season had four full moons, then the third full moon was named a blue moon.
• Recent popular usage defined a blue moon as the second full moon in a calendar month, stemming from an interpretation error made in 1946 that was discovered in 1999. For example, December 31, 2009 was a blue moon according to this usage.

A "blue moon" is also used colloquially to mean "a rare event", reflected in the phrase "once in a blue moon".

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Solar Eclipse

A total solar eclipse will take place on 13-14 November, 2012, with a magnitude of 1.0500. A solar eclipseoccurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partially obscuring the image of the Sun for a viewer on Earth. A total solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is larger than the Sun, blocking all direct sunlight, turning day into darkness. Totality occurs in a narrow path across the surface of the Earth, while a partial solar eclipse will be visible over a region thousands of kilometers wide.

For this eclipse totality will be visible from northern Australia and the southern Pacific Ocean.

When seen from west of the International Date Line, for example from Cairns in Australia, the eclipse will take place on the morning of November 14. Greatest eclipse, of duration 4 min 2 sec, will occur east of the International Date Line on November 13, approximately 2000 km east of New Zealand, and 9600 km west of Chile, visible only as a partial eclipse on sunset from the coast.

Super Moon Today

The biggest and most beautiful Moon tonight, March 19th, 2011

Thanks to a fluke of orbital mechanics that brings the moon closer to Earth than it has been in more than 18 years, the biggest full moon of 2011 will occur on Saturday, leading some observers to dub it a "supermoon."

On Saturday afternoon at 3 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, the moon will arrive at its closest point to the Earth in 2011:  a distance of 221,565 miles away. And only 50 minutes earlier, the moon will officially be full.

At its peak, the supermoon of March may appear 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than lesser full moons (when the moon is at its farthest from Earth), weather permitting. Yet to the casual observer, it may be hard to tell the difference.

The supermoon will not cause natural disasters, such as the Japan earthquake, a NASA scientist has stressed.

Spotting the supermoon The moon has not been in a position to appear this large since March 1993.

In December 2008, there was a near-supermoon when the moon turned full four hours away from its perigee — the point in its orbit that is closest to Earth. But this month, the full moon and perigee are just under one hour apart, promising spectacular views, depending on local conditions.

Although a full moon theoretically lasts just a moment, that moment is imperceptible to ordinary observation.

-Joe Rao