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| Take from my i-Pad January 31, 2018 |
A quick refresher on all these names: Last night much of the world saw a lunar eclipse, when the Earth passes between the sun and the moon and our planet's shadow falls on Luna. The nickname "blood moon" comes from the fact that light passing through Earth's atmosphere bathes the moon in a rosy glow.
A blue moon is the second full moon within a calendar month. A supermoon, meanwhile, means a full moon when our natural satellite is at perigee—its closest point to the Earth, when it appears slightly larger in the sky. All three of these phenomena lined up for the "super blue blood moon" this morning. The next super blue blood moon will happen exactly 19 years from now, on Jan. 31, 2037.
That's a long time to wait. Consider, though, that the last one before today's was in December of 1982, more than 35 years ago. You won't have to wait nearly as long to see the individual circumstances that make up the super blue blood moon. While we say "once in a blue moon" to indicate something relatively rare, the next blue moon is coming right up on March 31, 2018. The repeat blue moon is because of a quirk in the calendar: There is no completely full moon in February (a non-event event that's given the name "black moon"), which means there's a full moon in early March and another one before the month's end (a thank you from popularmechanics.com for this explanation)
