Rare blue moon will light up the skies on Halloween for the first time in 19 years
A rare blue moon will light up the skies on Oct. 31, 2020, making everyone's Halloween just a little bit spookier.
The moon turns full at 10:49 a.m. EDT, providing a haunting atmosphere for the little ghouls and ghosts out trick-or-treating later in the day (via candy slide, of course).
So what is a blue moon? Well, most months only have one full moon, but October actually has two in 2020: the Harvest Moon (Oct. 1) and the Hunter's Moon (Oct. 31).
The second full moon in a calendar month is known as a blue moon (even if it's not actually blue in colour).
Technically, the Oct. 31 moon is known as a Halloween Hunter's Blue Moon, which is basically impossible to say 10 times fast.
This blue moon is particularly rare, however.
A full moon occurs on Halloween every 19 years for trick-or-treaters in Central and Pacific time zones (and it's automatically a blue moon, because the lunar cycle is 29.5 days long).
This moon, however, will be the first Halloween full moon to take place across all time zones since 1944.
That makes it an event that hasn't occurred since the end of the Second World War.
Considering how spooky 2020 has been so far, a haunting blue moon on Halloween seems pretty fitting.
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