EARTH — Granted, blue moons aren’t quite as rare as you might think. But weather permitting, we’ll have a chance to see something unusual—a blue supermoon—on Wednesday, August 30.

Not just a song 

Blue moons happen when we see a full moon twice in a single month, according to Tracy Vogel and Ernie Wright in a news story at www.nasa.gov. 

The last blue moon took place in November 2020, per Wikipedia.

Will the moon actually be blue? No.

Didn’t I see a picture of a blue moon recently? An actual moon that was blue? Yes, it can happen. Vogel and Wright say that particles in the air can scatter red wavelengths of light, so the moon looks blue. But it doesn’t only happen when there’s a blue moon. So to speak.

What is a supermoon?

“The Moon travels around our planet in an elliptical orbit, or an elongated circle, with Earth closer to one side of the ellipse,” write Vogel and Wright. It passes through the point closest to Earth and the point furthest away. 

If it is near or at its closest point to Earth and it’s full, it is called a supermoon.

“During this event, because the full moon is a little bit closer to us than usual, it appears especially large and bright in the sky,” they write.

The last supermoon was August 1, 2023.

So is it super? Well, not really. Except in the way that the Moon is always super, no matter what phase it’s in.

But a blue supermoon! 

According to multiple sources, the last blue supermoon was in 2009; in 2018, you might have caught the super blue blood moon—there was a total lunar eclipse, which tinted the moon red.  

The next blue supermoon won’t take place until 2032.