It's NOT a blue moon this week... Guess I don't have to clean my car after all...
There is a prevailing myth about what a blue moon is. Thursday, May 31, will bring the second full moon of the month. But that does not constitute a blue moon, as is popularly believed.
Kelly Beatty, editor of Night Sky magazine and executive editor of Sky and Telescope, tells Robert Siegel that a blue moon actually refers to the phenomenon of having four full moons in a season, which ordinarily has three.
Tonight on the Channel 16 weather report, Tom Clark announced that tomorrow it would be a blue moon. No wonder everyone's believed this for so long, when the weather people announce it.
Posted by Chloe | Wednesday 30 May 2007 11:31PM
One of our local weather men also mentioned the number of moons in a season thing, but pointed out that it is popularly used now to refer to two moons in a month. Words do change meaning with usage; compare old dictionaries to new!
Posted by Georjean | Sunday 03 June 2007 3:43PM
Well, I guess the issue with this is that the meaning changed because a science magazine made a mistake in its publication back in the 1950s or whatever.
That's a bit different than "off the hook" changing meaning, via gobs of teenagers.
Of course astronomical science has quite a few terms that that are quite misleading regarding the meaning, because of changes over time. "Planetary Nebula" comes to mind. haha.
Posted by Chloe | Sunday 03 June 2007 8:37PM
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Tonight on the 
One of our local weather men also mentioned the number of moons in a season thing, but pointed out that it is popularly used now to refer to two moons in a month. Words do change meaning with usage; compare old dictionaries to new!
