According to LiveScience, a rare “blue supermoon” will rise in the night sky on Wednesday, August 30. The phrase “once in a blue moon” refers to an actual lunar event. Furthermore, as the name implies, they are extremely unusual, and the lunar event scheduled for Wednesday will not be witnessed for several years. However, the moniker is slightly deceptive because the blue moon is not genuinely blue. The moon will appear to be orange in color.
There are, in fact, two varieties of blue moons. The first type, a “calendar blue moon” occurs when two full moons occur within the same month. A full moon appears every 29.5 days, although rare, it necessarily occurs every two or three years. The second type is a “seasonal blue moon,” which describes a thirteenth full moon in a year as opposed to the typical 12.
The upcoming blue moon, on the other hand, is a mega blue moon
Because there was a full moon on the first of the month, Wednesday’s blue moon is of the former sort. The upcoming blue moon, on the other hand, is a mega blue moon. A perigean full moon is defined by NASA as “a full moon occurring near or at the time when the Moon is at its closest point in its orbit around Earth.” The upcoming blue supermoon fits the requirements for both sorts of moons.
A separate NASA post from earlier this month emphasizes the uncommon nature of these blue supermoons. It is noted that the astronomical conditions that produce such moons occur just once every decade on average. However, it can take up to two decades between blue supermoons on rare occasions. The second August full moon will be the largest and brightest of the year’s four supermoons, reaching a distance of 222,043 miles from Earth. The Harvest Moon, the final supermoon of 2023, will rise on September 29.
