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Today’s the Last Blue Moon Before the Future Gets Here

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Published on August 31, 2012

Today's the Last Blue Moon Before the Future Gets Here
Today's the Last Blue Moon Before the Future Gets Here

Bad news for romantics: now you won’t have two full moons a month to read Klingon poetry to your sweetheart. (At least not until July 2015, and by then everything’s going to be hovering so anything goes.) Today marks the final blue moon for nearly three years.

A “blue moon” is the term for a second full moon in the space of one month and does not refer to a color or hue that the moon takes on, even though that would be cool and everyone says that the moon should try something new, step out a little, shake off the cobwebs of its recent divorce from the Earth.

The moon will hit its full phase by 10 A.M. EST today.

Some other fun things about blue moons:

  • The moon was used by the Church in the 16th and 17th centuries to mark the arrival of Easter. When a blue moon resulted in that time span, the clergy would dub it a “betrayer moon.” (Or “belewe” in Middle English.)
  • Massive volcanic eruptions introduce particulates into the air that actually make the moon look blue.
  • The blue moon was a plot point in the 2011 runaway hit movie The Smurfs. Our dimensions could only be crossed when one appeared. (So, no Smurfs until 2015, thankfully.)
  • Wikipedia’s entry list of “blue moon in popular culture” somehow does not include the classic Rodgers and Hart ballad, which is notable for its current constant repetition in the head of the person currently writing this paragraph.

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