Blue moon over Santa Cruz to light Halloween!

The year 2020 includes 13 full Moons, including 2 two Supermoons, AND a full Moon on Halloween, a rarity that only occurs about every 19 years.

The first full Moon of 2020 was January’s Wolf Moon on January 10th. Usually, we have one full moon for each month, but occasionally, some months have two full Moons. For October 2020 we had a full Moon on the 1st, the Harvest Moon, and a second will be on Halloween, called the Hunter’s Moon.

Whenever two full Moons appear in a single month, every 2 1/2 to 3 years, the second full Moon is called a “Blue Moon,” although the full Moon on Halloween night won’t appear blue in color.

The next Halloween full Moon will be in 2039, followed by the years 2058, 2077, and 2096.

For a Supermoon to occur, we can thank the shape of the Moon’s orbit, which is not a perfect circle, but an oval shape. That means when the Moon orbits the Earth each month, it reaches a point that’s farthest from the Earth, called apogee, and a point where it swings closest to Earth, called perigee.

This year’s Supermoons were in March and April, when the full moon coincided with its closest distance to Earth on its elliptical orbit.  A Supermoon can appear 14% larger and 30% brighter than a more distant full Moon.