It’s a Blue Moon Day Friday
It'll be good viewing tonight. Photo courtesy public-domain-images.com
People looking at the night sky Friday night will have the opportunity to see a blue moon.
Rebecca Johnson at the University of Texas’ McDonald Observatory says the untrained eye may miss the importance by thinking that, although beautiful, it’s simply seeing a full moon.
“We don’t even have one every year,” Johnson said. “ So the expression ‘once in a blue moon’ means something that’s rare. And having two full moons in a month is pretty rare. So that’s what makes it special. It doesn’t look any different. It’s not blue.”
Johnson says our fascination with the moon has increased ever since the Apollo missions sent men there. And so did our knowledge.
“Ever since the 1960s we’ve been shooting lasers at the moon by hitting reflectors that were placed there by the Apollo astronauts,” she said. “And it measures the distance between the Earth and the moon to understand how the Earth and the moon are moving and how they are moving apart from each other, which is actually happening.”
The next blue moon, or two full moons in a month, will be in 2015.
