Day 13 – Witnessing Rare Blue Moon Tonight

It was 8:31pm.  I’ve been waiting at the west shore of Flathead Lake with my camera well set up on the tripod, expecting to witness Blue Moon that happens on very rare occasions.

A blue moon is usually defined as the second full moon to occur in a single calendar month.  Most of the time there is just one full moon per month, but occasionally there are two. Under this definition, the last blue moon occurred on Aug. 31, 2012, and the next one will occur July 2015.

An alternative definition is that the Blue Moon is the 3rd full moon of a 4 full moon summer.  That we call two different events blue moons is a relatively recent error: In 1980, a radio program used as its source an inaccurate 1946 article from Sky & Telescope magazine. The third-full-moon-in-a-season definition is actually correct.

Precisely speaking, it was already 33 minutes past the local moonrise schedule.  Just as I got a bit uneasy, the moon made its appearance from the mountain top.  I must have felt a stop at my heart beat – what an amazing moment!

I ended up spending the next 30 minutes witnessing and photographing the beautiful full moon as it rose.  I must have, once again, stumbled upon a perfect place at the perfect time.

Tip of the Day

• Sunrise and sunset hours:  This is very useful for you to schedule the perfect time to photograph sunrise, sunset, or full moon.  All you need to do is to input your own city.  For US locations, you just need to browse here.

• For more details of full moon and twilight, if I choose USA on the home page of sunrise sunset website, you can select the state.  Below “then set your calendar options and “Make Calendar””, select Civil twilight, Moonrise and moonset, leave the others as is, and click “Make Calendar”.  This will not only give you the exact sunrise, sunset time, but also the twilight window before sunrise and after sunset, during which you can capture nice colors.

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