Once in a Blue Moon: Rare Seasonal Blue Moon to Rise This Weekend

An unusual occurrence in the night sky will take place this weekend, yet it may go undetected by people who don't know what's going on.

A full moon will rise on Saturday evening, looking similar to others that rise throughout the year, yet this one will be unlike any other full moon in 2021. The full moon on Saturday night will be a blue moon.

The second full moon in a calendar month is referred to as a blue moon. This happens every two or three years, with the most recent instance being on Halloween last year.

By analyzing historical editions of the Maine Farmers' Almanac, the author of a March 1946 article in Sky & Telescope sought to interpret the customary practice of the editors of the Maine Farmers' Almanac.

He conjectured the erroneous rule for 'blue moons' since he didn't have enough almanacs to observe the right pattern, which led to the contemporary misunderstanding that a blue moon is a second full moon in a single solar calendar month, with no relation to the order it occurs in a season.

The word "blue moon" is used informally to imply a unique event because of its rarity, as in the expression "once in a blue moon."

1st Historical Usage

The term "blue moon" is first recorded in English in an anti-clerical pamphlet by two converted Greenwich friars, William Roy and Jerome Barlow, published in 1528 under the title" Rede me and be not wrothe, for I say no thynge but trothe" (attacking the Roman clergy, and Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in particular). The relevant passage is as follows:

"O churche men are wyly foxes ...Yf they say the mone is blewe

We must beleve that it is true

Admittynge their interpretacion."

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