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WHAT IS A BLUE MOON IN

ASTRONOMY?
BY: DONALD W. OLSON, RICHARD TRESCH FIENBERG, AND ROGER SINNOTT JULY 27, 2006 0

GET ARTICLES LIKE THIS SENT TO YOUR Recent decades have seen widespread popular embrace of the "Blue Moon," defined as
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the second full Moon in a calendar month. Countless news outlets have run stories about
Email (required) * Blue Moons.

A rising full Moon lights the scene in The Fishing

SIGN UP Party, painted by Fitz Hugh Lane after a visit to the
coast of Maine in August 1850. That month contained
a Fruit Moon, according to the Maine almanac's rules.

The notion of a "blue Moon," meaning "rare," can be traced back hundreds of years. But
in an article entitled "Once in a Blue Moon," folklorist Philip Hiscock traced the
calendrical meaning of the term "Blue Moon" to more recent times, namely to the Maine
Farmers' Almanac for 1937. Yet the almanac does not use the second-full-Moon-in-a-
month definition that most news outlets quote today.

With help from Margaret Vaverek (Southwest Texas State University) and several other
librarians, we obtained more than 40 editions of the Maine Farmers' Almanac from the
period 1819 to 1962. These refer to more than a dozen Blue Moons, and not one of them is
the second full Moon in a month. So where did that meaning come from?

HOW OFTEN DO BLUE MOONS HAPPEN?

Several clues point to a strong connection between the almanac's Blue Moons and the
four seasons of the year. All of the listed Blue Moons fall on the 20th, 21st, 22nd, or 23rd
day of November, May, February, or August. These blue moon dates fall about a month
before the Northern Hemisphere winter and summer solstices, and spring and fall
equinoxes, respectively, which occur on similar day numbers.

Although the idea of a seasonal pattern suggested itself to us immediately, verifying the
details required a lot of detective work. We found that the Blue Moon definition employed
in the Maine Farmers' Almanac is indeed based on the seasons, but with some subtle
twists.

Instead of the calendar year running from January 1st through December 31st, the
almanac relies on the tropical year, defined as extending from one winter solstice ("Yule")
to the next. Most tropical years contain 12 full Moons — three each in winter, spring,
summer, and fall — and each is named for an activity appropriate to the time of year (such
as the Harvest Moon in autumn). But occasionally a tropical year contains 13 full Moons,
such that one season has four rather than the usual three.

These tables appeared in the 1939 Maine Farmers'

Almanac and show that the beginnings of the seasons
were fixed by the "R.A.M.S." (right ascension of the
mean Sun). The almanac lists separately the "Turns
and Crosses" of the apparent Sun, which executes a
"turn" from northward motion in declination to
southward (or vice versa) at the solstices and "crosses
the line" (the celestial equator) at the equinoxes.

Today we usually mark the beginning of the seasons when the Sun's celestial longitude
passes 0° (spring), 90° (summer), 180° (autumn), and 270° (winter). The Sun appears to
move along the ecliptic at a variable rate because of the Earth's not-quite-circular orbit, so
the seasons defined this way are not equal in duration. Another approach uses the
dynamical mean Sun or fictitious mean Sun — imaginary bodies that move along the
ecliptic and the celestial equator, respectively, at a constant rate and produces seasons of
equal length. The Maine almanac defines the seasons using this alternative method.

The almanac also follows certain rules laid down as part of the Gregorian calendar reform
in 1582. The ecclesiastical vernal (spring) equinox always falls on March 21st, regardless of
the position of the Sun. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, 46 days before Easter, and must
contain the Lenten Moon, considered to be the last full Moon of winter. The first full
Moon of spring is called the Egg Moon (or Easter Moon, or Paschal Moon) and must fall
within the week before Easter.

When is the Moon "blue," in a calendrical sense?

According to the Maine almanac, a Blue Moon occurs
when a season has four full Moons, rather than the
usual three. This type of Blue Moon is found only in
February, May, August, and November, one month
before the next equinox or solstice. According to
modern folklore, a Blue Moon is the second full Moon
in a calendar month. This type of Blue Moon can
occur in any month but February, which is always
shorter than the time between successive full Moons.
Sky & Telescope

At last we have the "Maine rule" for Blue Moons: Seasonal Moon names are assigned near
the spring equinox in accordance with the ecclesiastical rules for determining the dates of
Easter and Lent. The beginnings of summer, fall, and winter are determined by the
dynamical mean Sun. When a season contains four full Moons, the third is called a Blue
Moon.

Why is the third full Moon identified as the extra one in a season with four? Because only
then will the names of the other full Moons, such as the Moon Before Yule and the Moon
After Yule, fall at the proper times relative to the solstices and equinoxes.

WHAT IS A BLUE MOON: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

During the period 1932 to 1957, under the editorship of Henry Porter Trefethen (1887-
1957), the Maine Farmers' Almanac consistently listed Blue Moons derived from the
convoluted seasonal rule just described. So where did the modern convention — that a
Blue Moon is the second full Moon in a calendar month — come from? Sky & Telescope
has, and is, the answer!

Laurence J. Lafleur (1907-66) of Antioch College, Ohio, discussed Blue Moons in a

question-and-answer column in Sky & Telescope, July 1943, page 17, citing the 1937 Maine
Farmers' Almanac as his source. It is clear that Lafleur had a copy of the almanac at his
side as he wrote, since he quoted word for word the commentary on the August 1937
calendar page. This commentary notes that the Moon occasionally "comes full thirteen
times in a year," but Lafleur did not judge whether this referred to a tropical year or a
calendar year. More important, he did not mention the specific dates of any Blue Moons
and never said anything about two full Moons in one calendar month.

OOPS!

The cover of the March 1946 issue of Sky &

Telescope.

Some three years later, in March 1946, an article entitled "Once in a Blue Moon" appeared
in Sky & Telescope (page 3). Its author, James Hugh Pruett (1886-1955), was an amateur
astronomer living in Eugene, Oregon, and a frequent contributor to Sky & Telescope.
Pruett wrote on a variety of topics, especially fireball meteors. In his article on Blue
Moons, he mentioned the 1937 Maine almanac and repeated some of Lafleur's earlier
comments. Then he went on to say, "Seven times in 19 years there were — and still are —
13 full moons in a year. This gives 11 months with one full moon each and one with two.
This second in a month, so I interpret it, was called Blue Moon."

Pruett must not have had the 1937 almanac handy, or he would have noticed that the Blue
Moon fell on August 21st (obviously not the second full Moon that month) and that 1937
had only 12 full Moons. But only in retrospect is his error so obvious.

MODERN FOLKLORE
Sky & Telescope adopted Pruett's new definition, using it in a note entitled "'Blue' Moons
in May" on page 176 of the May 1950 issue. In a bizarre twist, the data on lunar phases for
this note came from none other than H. Porter Trefethen of Winthrop, Maine, editor of
the very almanac Pruett misread four years earlier! But Trefethen himself never called the
second full Moon in a month a Blue Moon. The "'Blue' Moons" headline was likely added
by Sky & Telescope's founding editor, Charles A. Federer Jr. Federer agreed that he
probably wrote that headline with Pruett's then-recent article in mind and without
consulting Trefethen.

As Hiscock explained in the March issue, the popular radio program StarDate on January
31, 1980, also uses the second-full-moon-in-a-month definition. We examined the show's
script, authored by Deborah Byrd, and found that it contains a footnote not read on the air
that cites Pruett's 1946 article as the source for the information. A version of the game
Trivial Pursuit published in 1986 further popularized this defintion. (Indeed, a Google
Ngram shows that the term "blue Moon" itself became much more widely used after
1986.)

With two decades of popular usage behind it, the second-full-Moon-in-a-month

(mis)interpretation is like a genie that can't be forced back into its bottle. But that's not
necessarily a bad thing. Those with the sunniest outlooks will celebrate twice. Why not
treat Blue Moons as marking both the second full Moon in a calendar month and the third
full Moon in a season with four?

"Even if the calendrical meaning is new," said Federer, "I don't see any harm in it. It's
something fun to talk about, and it helps attract people to astronomy."

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