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Skygazers will be treated to a celestial feast in August, with supermoons and a ‘Blue Moon’ visible in the sky.
The first full Moon of the month will appear on the afternoon of August 1 at 2.32 p.m. EDT (12.02 a.m. IST on August 2), according to NASA. Around this period, the Moon will be full for three days, from early Monday morning to early Thursday morning.
According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac — a reference book collecting weather forecasts — it is traditionally known as the ‘Sturgeon Moon’ because the big sturgeon of the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain in the United States were most easily caught around this time of summer.
A supermoon’s disk size exceeds that of an average-sized Moon by up to 8%, while its brightness exceeds that of an average-sized full Moon by about 16%.
According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, the Full Moon will be at 9.36 p.m. ET (7.06 a.m. IST on August 31) on Wednesday, August 30.
According to NASA, there are two types of Blue Moons: monthly and seasonal. The Blue Moon is the second Full Moon of the month in a calendar month having two Full Moons. The seasonal Blue Moon is the third Full Moon of a four-Full Moon astronomical season.
Contrary to popular belief, a Blue Moon has nothing to do with the Moon’s blue tint. However, real blue-tinted Moons are extremely rare due to particles pushed into the atmosphere by natural disasters, according to the US space agency.
Blue Moons occur every 2 to 3 years on average. The most recent Blue Moon occurred on August 22, 2021. “Warm summer nights are the ideal time to watch the full moon rise in the eastern sky within minutes of sunset, and it happens twice in August,” Sky.com reported former NASA astrophysicist Fred Espenak as saying.
According to the story, the last time two full supermoons appeared in the same month was in 2018 – and it won’t happen again until 2037, according to Italian astronomer Gianluca Masi, founder of the Virtual Telescope Project. As a result, the phrase “once in a blue moon” was coined.
Source:OCN
