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At the end of this month, the sky will be graced by a rare Blue Moon. But wait: it’s actually a slightly smaller than usual full Moon that’s also a Blue Moon — so instead, newspapers and outlets, drawing on apocryphal traditions found in farmer’s almanacs so they can stave off a slow news day, are calling it “Blue Micromoon,” which is supposedly even rarer.
What’s going on with all these Moons? It’s lunacy!
To be clear, there will, in fact, be what is colloquially called a Blue Moon this Saturday night and Sunday morning. A Blue Moon is anytime a second full Moon appears in the same month, something that only occurs every two or three years. Or it’s when a season has four full Moons, instead of three, in case you were harboring any doubt that the whole thing is a bunch of made up nonsense.
The significance of all this is mostly invented — and for that matter, a Blue Moon isn’t even blue; if you catch one when it rises, it usually looks orange. There’s no intriguing astrophysical phenomena at play here, like with a solar eclipse, or even a lunar one (also called a Blood Moon, if you prefer.) It’s just a calendrical coincidence, independent of what the Moon is actually doing. You may as well start celebrating when a full Moon falls on a Friday, and call it the TGI Moon.
Witnessing a full Moon is cool, but we need to stop with the names. Last month it was a “Flower Moon,” which is just another name for a full Moon that happens to be in May. Correction: it was a full “Flower Moon” that was also a “micromoon.” A Micro Flower Moon? A Flower Micromoon?
And what is a micromoon anyay? It’s the slang that describes when the Moon’s oblong orbit takes it slightly farther from our planet than usual, making it appear marginally smaller in the sky. Similarly, a “supermoon” is when it’s closer and appears bigger.
Here’s the catch: none of these are official names, with no hard criteria on the distances the Moon needs to be at, giving people a lot of leeway on what they get to call a “supermoon” and a “micromoon.” Both of those, by the way, are fairly mundane and routine. They sure do punch up a headline, though. Remember the buzz around a “Super Worm Moon”, also known as a “Super Worm Equinox Moon,” a few years ago?
Well, don’t feel left out if you missed it, folks. There’s a “Strawberry Micromoon” coming up next month.
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