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The full moon on New Years Eve this year will be a "blue" moon. During a normal year, there are 12 full moons, which appear roughly every 28 days to remind young ladies to go rollerblading with poodles. However, the solar calender we base our year on contains a few days more than the lunar year. This means that every two or three years there's a thirteenth full moon.

So, when someone claims that something happens every Blue Moon, you can now cut them down with your insight into celestial mechanics and say "What, you mean on average every 2.7 years?".

Tomo wrote:So, when someone claims that something happens every Blue Moon, you can now cut them down with your insight into celestial mechanics and say "What, you mean on average every 2.7 years?".

Once every 2.7 years, that sounds about right.

and yes I am married

Did you know that "once every Preston Guild" means every 20 years?

Ah, that's a shame, I thought it was going to be some natural wonder thing. You know, "due to the all the Panda cola we drank in the 90s and the subsequent rising of bluon gas, the moon will appear an eye-popping shade of cyan tomorrow night..."

Still, your nerdy fact is cool too.

Discombobulator wrote:

Tomo wrote:So, when someone claims that something happens every Blue Moon, you can now cut them down with your insight into celestial mechanics and say "What, you mean on average every 2.7 years?".

Once every 2.7 years, that sounds about right.

and yes I am married

This use of the phrase "blue moon" only dates to the 1940s and seems to come from a misinterpretation of an almanac.
http://www.takeourword.com/Issue035.html#Spotlight

The actual meaning of "once in a blue moon" is just "very rarely". There's no traceable etymology for the phrase. In medieval and renaissance times, a blue moon meant something absurd or unbelievable, so it might have derived from that.

Once in a very great while the moon does appear blue, usually because of volcanic ash or similar particles in the atmosphere.

Robbie wrote:Once in a very great while the moon does appear blue, usually because of volcanic ash or similar particles in the atmosphere.

Surely you mean red

Tomo wrote:

Robbie wrote:Once in a very great while the moon does appear blue, usually because of volcanic ash or similar particles in the atmosphere.

Surely you mean red

Usually red, but I'm told very VERY rarely blue. Apparently (a dangerous word) there's a record of a blue moon in the ancient Chinese chronicles. I think there are also some reports of the moon looking greenish after Krakatoa.

I had a bright orange moon earlier this evening - caused by fog and atmospheric polution. It was beautiful.