A super blue Moon is set to appear on Wednesday night.
The forthcoming full Moon on Wednesday will be a super Moon, a blue Moon, and the Hindu festival of Rakhi Purnima or Raksha Bandhan, which celebrates the relationships between brothers. However, contrary to the term “blue Moon,” the celestial body will not actually appear blue in color. The term “blue Moon” comes from a definition given by Sky & Telescope magazine in 1946, which describes it as the second full Moon in a calendar month.
“The older definition of Blue Moon, dating back at least to the 1500s, is the name for the third full Moon of a four-Moon season.” According to this description, the full Moon in August 2024 will be a Blue Moon…”Neither of these definitions has anything to do with the Moon’s color…,” NASA noted on its website.
According to the American space agency, the unique moon will seem full for three days around its peak, from Tuesday night to Friday morning.
‘Super Moon’
The NASA added that although different sources have different definitions of what constitutes a “super” Moon, “all agree that in 2023 the two full Moons in August qualify.”
‘A real blue Moon’
The Indonesian volcano Krakatoa’s ash was responsible for the blue moons that persisted for several days in the 19th century.
The sun’s light propagates as waves, and the various colors of light have various physical characteristics, such as wavelengths. The colors we perceive are a result of the atmosphere’s atmospheric scattering of sunlight. During the Krakatoa eruption in 1883, some of the ash clouds had particles that were 1 micron (one millionth of a meter) broad, the ideal size to substantially scatter red light while allowing other colors to pass, according to NASA. As a result, the moonbeams sometimes seemed blue and sometimes green.
Following the Mexican volcano El Chichon’s eruption in 1983, a second incident of a similar nature took place.
Ratnavali