If you can take a break from all that New Year’s Eve revelry on Thursday, take a look up in the sky.
Behold, the blue moon.
For those expecting a slight blue hue encircling the moon, you might be a little disappointed.
“It won’t be blue at all - it’s just a saying,” said David Richey, associate director of the James S. McDonnell Planetarium at the St. Louis Science Center.
Richey explained that a blue moon occurs when there is two full moons in a calendar month. The first full moon of this month occurred on Dec. 2 and the next happens Thursday.
Blue moons happen every two years or so. The last was May 31, 2007 and the next will be in November 2010. And there won’t be any blue moons in 2011, 2014 and 2017.
“It’s fun to have it fall on New Year’s Eve, but it’s really just a function of how the calendar plays out,” Richey said.
No doubt, it will also be a boon for Molson Coors, the maker of the Belgian beer, Blue Moon.
For example, it appears Blue Moon is one of the sponsors of the New Year’s Eve bash at the Hyatt Regency in St. Louis.
In case you were wondering, the last blue moon that fell on New Year’s Eve happened in 1990. The next will be 2028.
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