Blue Moon tonight will not be seen again until 2015, The first blue moon in three years, will appear in the sky on Friday night, and the next blue moon will not be until 2015.
In Los Angeles, the full moon begins to rise at 7:13 pm
A blue moon means the moon is not actually going to change color is the rare occurrence of two full moons occur in the same calendar month.
The last time a blue moon happened was on the eve of New Year 2009. The next blue moon will occur on July 31, 2015, according to moongiant. com.
The phrase "blue moon" has been around for over 400 years, wrote Philip Hiscock, a folklore expert at Memorial University of Newfoundland, in a comprehensive article on the origin of the phrase "blue moon" in recent years.
But the actual meaning became popular only in the 1980s, wrote in his article in Sky & Telescope. Centuries ago, "blue moon" was more than a literary sense of the absurd "as saying that the moon is made of green cheese," he wrote.
Hiscock wrote that it was in 1988, when he first heard the term "blue moon" identified as the second full moon in a month, and was asked about it after "radio stations and newspapers around the world have one element in this piece of "ancient folklore, 'as they called it, from an international electronic history".
As a result, Hiscock concluded, the term was popularized by the radio program "Star Date" issued in January 1980. In 1985, the definition enshrined in the "Children's World Almanac of Records and Facts," and shortly after that it was Trivial Pursuit in 1986.
A NASA article says that the original source of the "blue moon" definition came after an amateur astronomer James Hugh Pruett, was trying to explain to readers of Sky & Telescope blue moons in 1946 he was trying to interpret complicated definition of the Maine Farmer's Almanac was "so complicated even professional astronomers struggled to understand it."
Full moon next month will take place on September 30, which is known as the harvest moon, and coincides with the Mid Autumn Festival, known for baking moon cakes prolific Asian American communities and Asian countries.
Forecasters expect clear skies at night on the coast and in the Los Angeles basin, but could have low clouds and fog later in the evening. The valleys are expected to be mostly clear.