Once In A Blue Moon

Blue moon of Aug 31, 2012
Wikimedia Commons, Cezar Popescu

People have been saying this phrase "once in a blue moon", all your life. You might have used it once or a few times yourself.

In case you don't know what it means, well maybe today is a good day to find out exactly... well we do have a blue moon tonight.

First off -- what it is not... a blue moon does not mean that the moon will actually appear blue. Instead, it most probably would look like any normal full moon.

Well of course, it might appear blue or red or orange, but only because of some reason that has absolutely nothing to do with this phenomenon.

Here is a short video that will easily explain everything to you, in one minute.

If you couldn't or do not want to watch the video just be advised that normally we have one full moon every month, but because the lunar (moon) cycle is shorter than any of the actual months, there will come a time when there will be a total of 13 full moons in one year, instead of 12 (one full moon per month is 12 full moons in a year).

And when this does happen (yes like in "once in a blue moon" because as you could have guessed by now, it doesn't really happen all that often) then the second full moon in the same month is called a blue moon. And this event happens once every few years or so.

Easy.

Be careful though, people do say that strange things happen during the full moon. Aawwoooo...