#Nextime blue moon clock full
We've written previously about how an error brought us to the current 'two full moons in one month definition.' A more convoluted old timey definition was introduced in ye ole Maine Farmer's Almanac circa 1930s as "the third full moon in an astronomical season with four." The modern blue moon is now more of a cultural phenomenon. In fact, astronomers rarely like to observe during the weeks surrounding the light-polluting full moon, and often compile data from the comfort of their university offices rather than visit mountaintop observatories these days… Like its modern internet meme cousin the 'Super-moon,' astronomers don't sit in mountain top observatories discussing the vagaries of the blue moon. We say "once in a blue moon," as if it's a rarity, but as you can see, they're fairly frequent, occurring nearly once every 2-3 years or so. The next time a blue moon occurs in the month of July is 2034, and the last July blue moon was 2004. In the 'two full moons in one month' sense, the last time a blue moon occurred was on August 31st, 2012, and the next is January 31st, 2018.
In modern day vernacular, the occurrence of two full moons in one calendar month has become known as a 'blue moon.' This is a result of the synodic period (the amount of time it takes for the moon to return to a like phase, in this case full back to full) of 29.5 Earth days being less than every calendar month except February.
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