If you noticed that the moon was looking bigger this weekend, it’s going to look bigger and brighter Monday night. Earth’s satellite reached its full lunar phase on Monday, but it will also be what’s called a blue supermoon or a Sturgeon Moon , according to NASA . In terms of color, the moon is not actually blue when this happens.
This nickname is derived from the fact that blue moons appear during a season when there are three or four full moons in total, according to astronomers. The term “Blue Moon” goes back to 1528, when it could be a reference to rare events like when dust in Earth’s atmosphere makes the Moon actually look blue, according to the space agency. Think of the old phrase, “Once in a blue moon.
” When it is a supermoon, Earth’s satellite appears 14% larger and 30% brighter than a micromoon, according to the Royal Museums Greenwich in London. A micromoon and supermoon only occur when the moon is full. This will be the first of four consecutive supermoons in 2024, with ones on Sept.
18, Oct. 17, and Nov. 15, the space website EarthSky wrote.
“That’s the beauty of the phases of the moon, they repeat,” Noah Petro, a lunar reconnaissance orbiter project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, told the Los Angeles Times . “Dust off the binoculars, find those telescopes, and make an event of it.” How to see the blue supermoon The full moon will hit its peak at around 2:26 p.
m. Eastern Time and look full for three days, according.