{"id":37021,"date":"2023-08-31T05:27:43","date_gmt":"2023-08-30T23:57:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=37021"},"modified":"2025-04-22T10:12:39","modified_gmt":"2025-04-22T04:42:39","slug":"super-blue-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/super-blue-moon\/","title":{"rendered":"Super Blue Moon"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><strong>What\u2019s in today\u2019s article?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Why in news?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>What is a super moon?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>What is a blue moon?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>How rare is a blue supermoon?<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Why in news?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The Raksha Bandhan full moon on August 30-31 will be unusual: it will be both a \u201cblue moon\u201d and a \u201csuper moon.\n<ul>\n<li>Rakhi is celebrated on the Purnima of the month of Shravan.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Hence, it will witness the occurrence of a &#8220;<strong>Super Blue Moon<\/strong>,&#8221; an extraordinary convergence of three celestial phenomena.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>What is a super moon?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com\/media\/editor_images\/2023\/8\/31\/12\/27\/42\/64f039e66ea8107344e8679f_OI.PNG\" \/><\/li>\n<li>The orbit of the moon around the earth is not circular; it is elliptical, that is, an elongated or stretched-out circle. It takes the moon 27.3 days to orbit the earth.\n<ul>\n<li>It is 29.5 days from <strong>new moon to new moon<\/strong>, though.<\/li>\n<li>This is because while the moon is orbiting the earth, both the earth and the moon are also moving around the sun.<\/li>\n<li>Hence, it takes additional time for the sun to light up the moon in the same way as it does at the beginning of every revolution around the earth.<\/li>\n<li>The <strong>new moon is the opposite of the full moon<\/strong> \u2014 it is the darkest part of the moon\u2019s invisible phase, when its illuminated side is facing away from the earth.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>The point closest to earth in the moon\u2019s elliptical orbit is called perigee, and the point that is farthest is called apogee.<\/li>\n<li>A super moon happens when the <strong>moon is passing through or is close to its perigee, and is also a full moon<\/strong>. This happens with a new moon as well, just that it is not visible.\n<ul>\n<li>A full moon occurs when the moon is directly opposite the sun (as seen from earth), and therefore, has its entire day side lit up.<\/li>\n<li>The full moon appears as a brilliant circle in the sky that rises around sunset and sets around sunrise.<\/li>\n<li>According to NASA, a <u>full moon at perigee (super moon) is about 14% bigger and 30% brighter than a full moon at apogee<\/u> (called a \u201cmicro moon\u201d).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>What is a blue moon?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Blue moon describes the situation when a <strong>full moon is seen twice in a single month<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Because the new moon to new moon cycle lasts 29.5 days, a time comes when the full moon occurs at the beginning of a month, and there are days left still for another full cycle to be completed.\n<ul>\n<li>Such a month, in which the full moon is seen on the 1st or 2nd, will have a second full moon on the 30th or 31st.<\/li>\n<li>According to NASA, this happens every two or three years.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>It is important to note that the term <u>Blue Moon has nothing to do with the actual colour of the moon<\/u>.<\/li>\n<li>Moons can appear in various shades depending on atmospheric conditions, but a Blue Moon is not necessarily blue in colour.\n<ul>\n<li>Sometimes, smoke or dust in the air can scatter red wavelengths of light, as a result of which the moon may, in certain places, appear more blue than usual.<\/li>\n<li>But this has nothing to do with the name \u201cblue\u201d moon.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>How rare is a blue supermoon?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>According to NASA, the blue supermoons are a very rare phenomenon. It mentions that these moons often only appear once every ten years due to astronomical conditions.<\/li>\n<li>But occasionally, the interval between blue supermoons can be as long as twenty years.<\/li>\n<li>The following super blue moons will take place in pairs in 2037, in January and March.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3><strong>Q1) What is apogee?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Apogee is a term used in astronomy and orbital mechanics to describe the point in an object&#8217;s orbit around a celestial body, such as a planet or a moon, where it is farthest from that body. In simpler terms, it is the highest point or the farthest distance in an object&#8217;s path from the celestial body it is orbiting.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Q2)\u00a0What is Perigee?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Perigee is a term used in astronomy and orbital mechanics to describe the point in an object&#8217;s orbit around a celestial body, such as a planet or a moon, where it is closest to that body. In simpler terms, it is the lowest point or the closest distance in an object&#8217;s path to the celestial body it is orbiting.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Source:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/explained\/explained-sci-tech\/super-blue-moon-8916383\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>Super Blue Moon of Raksha Bandhan: will it be blue in colour and super in size?<\/u><\/a><u> | <\/u><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hindustantimes.com\/lifestyle\/festivals\/rare-super-blue-moon-to-illuminate-the-sky-this-week-heres-what-you-need-to-know-101693198586591.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>Hindustan Times<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Super Blue Moon is an extraordinary convergence of &#8220;blue moon\u201d and a \u201csuper moon&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":37022,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-37021","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-mains-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}