Once in a Blue Moon, on May 31, 2007

By: Slade Ogletree

I’ve always wondered what they were talking about when I was told “That’ll happen ‘once in a Blue moon”. Then I heard that we were going to see one here in Baja this month! A blue moon? Are you telling me that I’m going to see the Moon turn blue? I’ve seen eclipses and other phenomena, but this I have to see!!

It turns out that we may be disappointed with this one. While what we will experience on May 31st is a “Blue Moon”, there will be no light show. There will be no color change in the Moon’s appearance. The Moon we see will be just another full moon in May.

It’s not that a full moon rising over the Sea of Cortez isn’t an awesome sight. Trust me, it is. We usually have one full moon per month, right? Well we’ve already had our full moon in May. It happened on May 2nd. The second full moon to occur within a given month is called a Blue Moon.

Other factors such as forest fires, volcanic eruptions, and plain old air pollution can cause the moon to take on a bluish glow. This type of thing happened in 1991 when Mt Pinatubo blew its top in the Philippines. In the 1950’s forest fires in western Canada caused the same effect in some places, but these had nothing to do with the Blue Moons that we refer to here.

More Below...