![]() There author James Hugh Pruett wrote how two full Moons fall in a single month seven times every 19 years. In modern usage, the second full Moon in a month has come to be called a "Blue Moon." But it's not! This colorful term is actually a calendrical goof that worked its way into the pages of Sky & Telescope back in March 1946. ![]() But according to modern folklore, a Blue Moon is the second full Moon in a calendar month. When is the Moon "blue," in a calendrical sense? According to the 1937 Maine Farmer's Almanac, a Blue Moon occurs when a season has four full Moons, rather than the usual three. After all, the circumstances were the same 19 years ago, on Decemand there were no global consequences (apart from the debut of the Sci-Fi Channel on cable television). Seriously, I doubt the world will grind to a halt on New Year's Eve. Running the numbers, I calculate that those two events take place 29.488 days apart - amazingly close to the Moon's average synodic month of 29.531 days.Īnd did I mention that late on December 31st there'll also be a partial lunar eclipse, visible from Europe and Asia? And for all this to occur on the final day of 2009, the end of the dread decade of the 00s, the Uh-ohs? Can this all be mere coincidence? Yep, it's all right there on page 52 of December's Sky & Telescope: full Moons occur on December 2nd at 7:30 Universal Time, and again on the 31st at 19:13 UT. I couldn't believe that doomsayers had overlooked this dread portent, so I double-checked my facts. After all, an even more alarming calamity awaits us on New Year's Eve: a full Moon - the second one in December. I've got more important things to worry about than this market-driven piece of trumped-up hysteria. This suggests that lots of you have seen it.īut not me. Industry stats show that by late December the end-of-the-world disaster flick 2012 had grossed $730 million worldwide.
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