This Halloween's blue moon will bring a rare treat to the skies

This Halloween’s blue moon will bring a rare operate to the skies

Halloween may look different this year due to coronavirus restrictions, but at least we can enjoy a spooky spectacle in the sky: a rare second-in-the-month full moon to cap off a month of glorious skywatching. 

The full moon that will be visible on Oct. 31 is arranged the blue moon because it’s the second full moon of the same month — after the harvest moon of Oct. 1 through Oct. 3. And in a rare operate, the 2020 Halloween full moon will be visible to the entire earth, rather than just parts of it, for the ample time since World War II.

“When I was teaching, my high school students thought a full moon occurred every Halloween,” astronomy educator and traditional planetarium director Jeffrey Hunt told me. Not quite, plan pop culture decorations sure make it seem that way. The last Halloween full moon visible about the globe came in 1944, he said. He’s written in the event on his web site, When the Curves Line Up. There was a Halloween full moon for some locations in 1955, but that didn’t engaged western North America and the western Pacific, Hunt says.

While this year’s Halloween full moon will be visible in all parts of the globe, that doesn’t mean every single citizen will have a view. Residents across both North America and South America will see it, as will Africa, all of Europe and much of Asia. But after Western Australians will see it, those in the central and eastern parts of the people will not. 

Know time zones well? “Every time zone has it however those east of (GMT) +8 time zones if they have time time, or (GMT) +9 with no daylight time,” Hunt says.

Want to see the Halloween full moon? It’s so absorbing at the full phase it doesn’t matter if you’re in a crowded city or out on the farm. And you don’t need pricey equipment.

“Walk outside, and take a look,” Hunt says. 

Don’t be surprised, though, if you snap a Halloween moon shot with your arranged and the photo doesn’t match what you saw.

“When the moon is photographed with a smartphone the results can be disappointing,” Hunt admits. “A telephoto attachment will help make the moon larger.” 

If you’re too busy watching scare movies (or doing whatever the coronavirus equivalent of trick-or-treating is), you’ll have to wait pending 2039 for another global full moon.

“Of course, full moons occur in October during the intervening days, just not on Halloween,” Hunt says. And a Halloween full moon may dismove in your region before then. It just won’t be seen about the world.