Driving into the studios early this morning, I was greeted by a big ol’ full moon. Not an unusual occurrence…except that it is the 2nd full moon this month! Every month has a full moon, but every 3 years or so, we get 2 full moons in the same month, known as a “blue moon”. But this morning it was nothing but glowing white. I should’ve stopped along Route 41 on my drive in to take a photo of the moon while I was in the countryside. It was so bright! It doesn’t look as brilliant in the above photo due to the street lights in Galesburg.
The blue hue happens when there is a huge amount of ash, smoke, or dust particles in the atmosphere. The last time that a blue moon was truly blue was witnessed in Scotland in September 1950. The blue hue was caused by smoke and ash particles in the atmosphere from forest fires burning in Canada. Weird, but true!
So today, if you use the phrase “once in a blue moon”, you mean today. Unless you are going to be a stickler and actually require the moon to be the color blue, then who knows if/when that will ever happen again!
-info used from an article written by Jareen Imam and posted here:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/29/world/blue-moon-july-31-irpt/
