Tonight's full moon ushers in July's 'blue moon'

[ErikJ]

Source: Oregonian

Holy cow, something must be happening up there on the moon. For the first time since August 2012, we're having two full moons in the same month. The first is tonight, July 1, then it happens again on July 31.

We'll have to wait until September for the big show, a full "supermoon," when the moon is at its closest to the Earth as it reaches fullness, thus appearing unusually large. Last year the full supermoon happened for several months right through summer and repeatedly spell bound audiences around the world. (The full supermoon comes Sunday, Sept. 27.)

A blue moon is usually explained as a second full moon in a month, according to Jim Todd, space and science education director for Portland's Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.

This July, the moon comes full on Wednesday at 7:20 p.m. PD, then again on Friday, July 31, at 3:43 a.m. PDT. A blue moon occurs every three to four years, when the date for one full moon falls on or near the beginning of a calendar month so that the following full moon comes before the end of the same month.
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Read more: http://www.oregonlive.com/travel/index.ssf/2015/07/july_brings_blue_moon_two_full.html

[elleng]

1. THANKS for the reminder!!!

'Once in a Blue Moon!'

[pinto]

2. First July full moon tonight, 9:00 PM, Pacific, @ 99.7 % full - The Full Buck Moon

I think it's called a hunters' moon or a buck moon.

– The Full Buck Moon – July is normally the month when the new antlers of buck deer push out of their foreheads in coatings of velvety fur. It was also often called the Full Thunder Moon, for the reason that thunderstorms are most frequent during this time. Another name for this month’s Moon was the Full Hay Moon.

https://farmersalmanac.com/full-moon-names/

[lumberjack_jeff]

3. Full moon rising from Mt Rainier caldera

Taken last night. Something you don't see very often.

[niyad]

7. so lovely

[lunasun]

10. nice

[irisblue]

4. a ? please

the full moon of July 31st is the second one, wouldn't that be the blue moon....altho I am happy to celebrate both.

[pscot]

5. That calls for a tune

[niyad]

6. or this tune:

[Uncle Joe]

8. It was unusually orange the other night,

and most beautiful.

Thanks for the thread, ErikJ.

[roamer65]

9. Damn thing ruins deep space viewing.

It's like a big lightbulb in the sky. Yuck.

I wish we were a moonless planet.

[ErikJ]

11. but without the moon we would be a people-less planet.

The moon keeps the earth from wobbling on its axis, which would make the earth a nightmare environment.

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. That's only by a post-1946 definition, popularised in the 1980s

The idea of a Blue Moon as the second full moon in a month stemmed from the March 1946 issue of Sky and Telescope magazine, which contained an article called “Once in a Blue Moon” by James Hugh Pruett. Pruett was referring to the 1937 Maine Farmer’s Almanac, but he inadvertently simplified the definition. He wrote:

Seven times in 19 years there were — and still are — 13 full moons in a year. This gives 11 months with one full moon each and one with two. This second in a month, so I interpret it, was called Blue Moon.

Had James Hugh Pruett looked at the actual date of the 1937 Blue Moon, he would have found that it had occurred on August 21, 1937. Also, there were only 12 full moons in 1937. You need 13 full moons in one calendar year to have two full moons in one calendar month. However, that fortuitous oversight gave birth to a new and perfectly understandable definition for Blue Moon.

EarthSky’s Deborah Byrd happened upon a copy of this old 1946 issue of Sky and Telescope in the stacks of the Peridier Library at the University of Texas Astronomy Department in the late 1970s. Afterward, she began using the term Blue Moon to describe the second full moon in a calendar month on the radio. Later, this definition of Blue Moon was also popularized by a book for children by Margot McLoon-Basta and Alice Sigel, called “Kids’ World Almanac of Records and Facts,” published in New York by World Almanac Publications, in 1985. The second-full-moon-in-a-month definition was also used in the board game Trivial Pursuit.
...
Blue Moon as third full moon of four in a season. The Maine Farmer’s Almanac defined a Blue Moon as an extra full moon that occurred in a season. One season – winter, spring, fall, summer – typically has three full moons. If a season has four full moons, then the third full moon may be called a Blue Moon.

There was a Blue Moon by this definition happened on November 21, 2010. Another occurred on August 20-21, 2013. And the next one will occur on May 21, 2016.

http://earthsky.org/space/when-is-the-next-blue-moon#third-season