​The moon will be very beautiful in the sky from Wednesday through Thursday evening, and people all over the world are talking about a blue supermoon. It must be said that the moon will not turn blue, and in the article you can read about American traditions, colors, legends and astronomy.

Blue Moon

There is usually only one full moon phase in each month of the year, given that we are talking about a 29.5 day lunar cycle. The exception is August, because there was also a full moon on August 1st, as well as August 30th. Here’s what a blue moon means: the second full moon in a calendar month that has two full moons.

These Supermoons happen about once every three to four months, and the current Supermoon is the third since 2023. These “blue moons” are rare and occur once every ten years. The last one was in 2018.

The term “blue moon” eight decades ago referred to the third full moon in a season that had four full moons. A new definition of a “blue moon” appeared in 1946 in Sky & Telescope magazine.

A Super Moon is when the Moon is closest to Earth and also the phase of the Full Moon. A supermoon looks bigger and brighter than normal full moons, but the difference is hard to see with the naked eye.

Many colorful moons

The Moon is the closest celestial body to the Earth, the average distance of which is 384,400 km with small fluctuations (from 363,300 km to 405,500 km). So even when the Moon is closest, it is still very far away, as the distance is 5% less than average and 10% less than when the Moon is farthest (at apogee).

The colloquial term “supermoon” was coined in 1979 by an American astrologer named Richard Nolle, who mistakenly predicted that the event would cause disasters (severe weather and earthquakes).

American tradition has a “Strawberry Moon,” “Pink Moon,” or “Flower Moon,” but the Moon does not turn red, pink, or the color of flowers as the names suggest.

These names first appeared over a century ago in an annual almanac that was extremely popular in the United States: the Farmers’ Almanac, which also contained data on the phases of the moon and popular beliefs about the moon.

The Strawberry Moon is so called because it falls during the strawberry harvest, and the others because certain flowers bloom at that time in North America. The name “strawberry moon” was given by the Native American Algonquin tribe.

“Worm month” is called so because at the end of March the first earthworms appear, which become food for birds.

It should also be said that the Moon cannot change its color because the Moon is a huge celestial body and reflects the light of the Sun. The color we see on the Moon is determined by how the surface absorbs sunlight and what it reflects.

The moon appears orange only at sunset and sunrise when it is visible on the horizon. When we look at the horizon, we see the Moon through a very thick layer of air that scatters the moonlight.

What the Astronomical Observatory of Admiral Vasile Urceanu says about the Moon these days:

On August 31 at 04:34, the full moon phase occurs, when the moon is visible in the sky all night. To the naked eye, the Moon will appear full from August 30 to September 1.

To those who want to see a supermoon or a blue moon, we say that these astronomical phenomena do not exist. They are invented by the mass media. We do not show the full moon from the observatory because it is very bright.