If you like to marvel at the natural beauty in our universe, you can sit back tonight and tonight with a bit of luck. The blue super moon is showing itself again. But contrary to what you might suspect, the name does not refer to the color of the moon, but to the time of its appearance. The second full moon in one month is called a blue moon.
“People who look at the sky tonight will not see a blue moon,” says Theo Jurriens. The astronomer from the University of Groningen, who comes from Meppel, thinks that you should also completely forget about the description supermoon. “But what is exciting: it may just be that tonight the moon is very nicely colored red. I saw it earlier this week and it was also beautiful red.”
The fact that the moon turns so clearly red has to do with forest fires in Canada. “The soot particles from it cross the ocean when the wind is favorable and the moon turns red because of those soot particles in the air above Western Europe. That soot particles from the other side of the world end up all the way in Western Europe is actually much more special to me than all those blue moons or super moons.”
According to the astronomer, what is also special when looking at the moon tonight is the position of the planet Saturn, which is just above the moon. “Saturn will become increasingly visible in the coming months because it is relatively closer to the Earth. The Moon revolves around the Earth, and the Earth revolves around the Sun, and Saturn also revolves around the Sun. But those distances are not always the same. means that when the moon is closer to the earth, it is bigger in the sky. That is called supermoon.”
Jurriens doubts whether people without an above-average knowledge of the universe will see tonight whether the moon, apart from the red color, looks different than usual. “When I was little I never heard about a supermoon and then they were already there,” he laughs. “Make sure it’s still a little red. And take your binoculars with you, because if you look closely you might be able to see the ring of the planet Saturn.”
If you don’t have good binoculars, there is no man overboard, according to Jurriens. “Then you just see a beautiful full moon, with a dot above it. That is the planet Saturn.” Whether the weather cooperates a bit to see the moon and Saturn properly? Jurriens already has his advice ready. “Just go outside and see if you can see it,” he concludes soberly.