Blue Moon

blue moon, the second full moon in a calendar month. The period from one full moon to another is about 29 ¹/₂ days, so when two occur in the same month, the first of these full moons is always on the first or second day of the month. February, which has only 28 days (29 days in leap years), can never have a blue moon. Months with 31 days—January, March, May, July, August, October, and December—have a much better chance of hosting a blue moon because of their length. On average, a blue moon occurs once every 33 months or full moons, 41 times per century, or about seven times every 19 years. An even rarer event is when two blue moons happen in the same calendar year, which happens about four times per century.

The Moon is not actually blue, and as long ago as the 16th century the expression “the Moon is blue” meant something that was not possible. However, greenish- and bluish-tinted Moons are sometimes observed just before sunrise or just after sunset when large quantities of dust or smoke particles are concentrated high in the atmosphere, filtering out the longer wavelengths of colours such as red and yellow. For two years following the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano in Indonesia in 1883, people around the world reported seeing strangely coloured sunsets and a Moon that appeared blue. With this possible, but uncommon, occurrence, “once in a blue moon” came to mean rare rather than impossible.

The first modern use of the phrase appeared in the early 1900s, referring to an extra full moon in a traditional three-month calendar season. The four seasons—spring, summer, fall, and winter—are standard divisions of the calendar year, each spanning three months. In a typical year, each of these seasons has just three full moons, but occasionally an extra, fourth full moon occurs in this three-month span. Publications such as almanacs sometimes referred to the extra full moons as blue moons. In 1946, an article in the magazine Sky & Telescope incorrectly interpreted this usage, stating that the extra moon was the second in a calendar month rather than the fourth in a season, providing a new meaning that eventually crept into wide usage in the 1980s.

In some modern and ancient cultures, lunar cycles were the basis for the calendar; the traditional Chinese and Hindu calendars are two such systems. In order to keep these lunar calendars in accordance with the solar-based year, special “leap months” are added every few years. In both the Chinese and Hindu systems, these leap months correspond to blue moon months. Despite this important function, in Western cultures months with blue moons have never had special cultural or religious significance.

The difference in time zones between geographic locations sometimes makes the timing of a blue moon a source of confusion. The timing of the first full moon in a blue moon month may actually fall the day before in a location more than one time zone to the west. For example, if the actual time of a full moon is 1:05 am on December 1 in New York City, the actual time of the full moon is 11:05 pm on November 30 two time zones to the west in Denver. Therefore, if a second full moon occurs at the end of December in New York City—making it a blue moon—the same event will not be repeated in Denver, where the first full moon occurred in November.

Because new moons are also 29 ¹/₂ days apart, there are also rare months when there are two new moons. No comparable phrase exists for this calendar phenomenon. The rarest of all calendar months are those without even one full moon; this can occur only in February. In the 20th century, Februaries without full moons happened only four times. In the 21st century, the coincidence will again happen only four times: in 2018, 2037, 2067, and 2094. Every time this phenomenon occurs in a February, both the January before and the March following experience two full moons, yielding a year with two blue moons.