"Blue Moon" Appears in Sky Saturday Night 154
ArbiterOne writes "Tonight a rare spectacle can be seen: the second full moon in a month, which is sometimes called the "blue moon", according to CNN. Don't be disappointed if it isn't actually blue, though; the blueness is caused by increased density of smoke or ash in the air, such as after a volcanic eruption."
Not all that rare (Score:5, Interesting)
Rare? (Score:5, Interesting)
The phrase "Once in a blue moon" was first noted in 1824 and refers to occurrences that are uncommon, perhaps even rare. Yet, to have two full Moons in the same month is not as uncommon as one might think. In fact, it occurs, on average, about every 32 months. And in the year 1999 it actually occurred twice in three months.
Rare? (Score:4, Interesting)
Black Moon is even more rare (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Rare? (Score:4, Interesting)
(treating the months as independent of each other which obviously isn't the case but shouldn't affect the outcome)
It is not the case, it should affect the outcome, and it does. Using your figures and ignoring fractional days of a lunation, the day of the month on which a full moon occurs regresses 1-3 days each month, so if a "blue" moon occurs this month (in days 29-31) one can't occur next month (in days 26-28).
Ske & Telescope had an article about this... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Rare? (Score:1, Interesting)
picture of actual BLUE moon (Score:1, Interesting)
Sig. (Score:0, Interesting)
link to transgaming [transgaming.com]. This game will also work under wine (I've gotten it working personally), cedega makes things sooo much easier. It's not perfect; battle.net has font issues, but apparently it's not a big deal if you've played battle.net before.
Note that transgaming says that brood war doesn't work, but it does; their game listing is not updated. I just recently installed brood wars in cedega 4 (formerly known as winex)
Re:Not all that rare (Score:3, Interesting)
There are approximately 13 lunar cycles in a year, and 12 months. Simple math should be able to tell you that there must be a blue moon on average at least once a year--rarely two, and rarely none. In fact, over the next 20 years, 17 will have blue moons [infoplease.com].
That's about every 1.2 years.
Re:Rare? (Score:2, Interesting)