Blue Moon

Once in a blue moon…..the phrase for me has a dreamy romantic connotation which brings to mind a dark mysterious sky with a glowing orb in the sky. An orb, upon which if you look and make a wish anything is possible. A rare opportunity!  Well, tonight is a blue moon and while we’ve already done the article for today I felt a blue moon was special enough to do two. What exactly is a “BLUE” moon? Does it have any historical significance? Is it simply just rare?

Technically, a blue moon is: can be one of two things it can be either a physically blue moon such as when the volcano Krakatoa erupted in 1883 and caused the moon to appear blue for nearly two years. It can also refer to an extra full moon in a season.

In the United States the Farmer’s Almanac would calculate the dates of full moons and planting schedules based on what is called a tropical calendar year. Most tropical years contain twelve full moons but every once in awhile thirteen occur.  Each moon was generally named during the year based on its placement in the calendar such as the Harvest Moon, Yule Moon and Easter Moon. The blue moon was often called the Betrayer Moon by or false moon as it did not have any calendar significance.

There are lots of interesting tidbits of information regarding blue moons and folklore if you’d like to take the time to read them I’ll provide an interesting link at the bottom. In the meantime, I think we can all agree on the colloquial definition of extremely rare.

http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/bluemoon.html