New Year Starts With A Super Blue Moon, A Blood Moon, And A Black Moon

Happy New year and welcome to 2018.  January first was the full wolf moon, which also happens to be a super moon.  That means the moon’s orbit is in perigee, its closest point to Earth.  The moon this year will be full, just as the moon hits its closest point in orbit (perigee), making it appear up to fourteen percent larger and thirty percent brighter than usual  (9:24 p.m. EST (0224 GMT Tuesday Jan. 2).  The January full moon is called the Wolf Moon named after howling wolves, that would appear outside native American villages. It is also known as the Old Moon, Moon after Yule and the Snow Moon.  Some Native American tribes refereed to this as the Snow Moon, but most applied that name to the next full Moon, in February.  However this year the snow moon will appear in January and also be a blue moon.  The next blue moon this year will occur in March, on the same days as January.

A blue moon occurs when a full moon happens more than once in the same month.  Hence the saying once in a blue moon.  Originally a blue moon was considered to be when a full moon occurred four times in a season. A season usually has three full moons.  This January’s  blue moon and super moon will also be a total lunar eclipse and create what has become known as the blood moon. When in total eclipse the moon appears red.  North America will be able to see this total lunar eclipse.  The west coast will see the full eclipse the east coast will see a partial due to the time the moon sets. The Earth’s shadow will completely cover the moon, on Jan. 31, 2018.  The January blue moon is known as the snow moon, which is normally the February full moon.  There will not be a full moon in February this year.  February will be a “Black Moon”  this is a term not used often, but it describes a month without a full moon. This can only occur in February due to the amount of days in the month.  Full moons cycle every 29.53 days.  The black moon is a rare occurrence.  It has also been used to describe a month with two new moons.

So get out and check out the moon, bundle up because the cold is brutal out there and will be all month.

Fish On!

Rich King

Moon phase dates and times for 2018 …