So I have been asked twice today about the "pink moon". It drew my usual response to that sort of silliness, but tonight I did a quick google search and sure enough there are stories in the regular media and some others about this being "once in a year event" and urging people to get out and see this event.
Turns out the name is based on how native americans used to track time in the year by the sequence of fuul moons and the full moon near April was a pink moon because a particular plant would flower then. The names were included in "Farmers Almanacs" in the US and so these various names have become known.
What is sad is that the origin of the various names, which is an interesting story, get's swamped by bad headlines and sketchy reporting to the extent that friends of mine thought the moon would actually be pink.
I thought 'Blue Moon' was when the moon was 100% twice in one month. The second 100% at the end of the month was considered a 'Blue Moon'.
Don't know why it's 'Blue' though.
Could be true, could be not true... Wikipedia is a lot like the bible. Just because a lot of people contributed to it doesn't necessarily make it accurate.
I saw this full moon earlier in the week at about 6am. I've never taken a astro photo but felt compelled to take as I thought the moon looked really stunning in the early dawn. Unfortunately it was taken on my crappy 5mb phone and didn't do the shot justice.
Perhaps this moon could be described as a "pink moon" ?
