Don’t Miss this weekend’s Super Buck Moon! said the July headline, repeated in respected newspapers and websites. The problem? There really wasn’t anything to see. At least, nothing out of the ordinary. But such celestial come-ons are increasingly common. We’ve previously highlighted this strange phenomenon, but now let’s see if there’s some easy way to quickly spot such celestial click-bait.
Astronomy popularizers can be former astronauts whom NASA pays to keep space interest high, TV announcers or simply journalists looking for catchy headlines. Most have spotty records for publicizing worthy sky spectacles. Usually they just don’t know better themselves. Sadly, some with astrophysics doctorate degrees cannot point to and name a single star in the heavens — a huge change from the academic emphasis throughout bygone centuries. Whatever the reason, the past 20 years have brought an avalanche of faux-sky-spectacles.
Leading global tours for decades, teaching college astronomy, and offering public sky programs has vividly shown me what excites people and what doesn’t. If you’ll give me five minutes right now, I’ll save you hours of frustration.
The Full Moon: You’ve seen it all your life and you know what it looks like. It only truly changes when it goes into Earth’s shadow to produce an eclipse. So a total or partial lunar eclipse is worth going out to see. (We’ll get one here the next Full Moon, at 10:44 p.m.). A penumbral eclipse, when the Full Moon doesn’t change its appearance (because our planet’s outer shadow is too subtle to make a difference) is not worth setting the alarm for.
Other Full Moon “events.” It’s become common for the media to announce an upcoming Blue Moon, Super Moon, Buck Moon, Wolf Moon, the list is long. Ignore them all. In no case will that Full Moon look any different from every other Full Moon you’ve seen all your life. Super Moon supposedly means the Moon is unusually close and thus bigger-looking. But the difference in size from average is never more than seven percent, too small to be perceptible. During a “Super Moon,” you see a normal-looking Full Moon and try to compare it with your recollection of past Moons. Result: it doesn’t seem unusual. Unless it’s near the horizon. Every Moon, even the most distant ones, seem large when very low.
As to Blue Moon, that phrase first appeared in a local Maine almanac 80 years ago, then was reprinted in error by another magazine. There was no history or tradition of calling a month’s second Full Moon by that title. And two Full Moons in the same month isn’t particularly rare, happening four times a decade. So applying the phrase “Blue Moon” to such a situation is a recent and mistaken idea, not some actual term or tradition used by any authority, group, tribe, or reference.
As for naming each month’s Full Moon, that’s something Native American tribes liked to do, and the colonists generally followed the Algonquin appellations. But for any media to now officially announce that the upcoming March Full Moon is the Worm Moon, for example, ignores and belittles all other tribes, for whom it was the Light Snow Moon, the Lizard Moon, the Flower Time Moon, and countless other names. So when anyone says Buck Moon or Wolf Moon, remember that it’s not an astronomy term or official lunar title, but a single tribe’s name. Many Native Americans even alternated more than one title for the same Moon. September and October’s Harvest and Hunter’s Moons — those are the only official ones.
Auroras: We get them here, and rarely, like on March 13, 1989, we’ll see distinct animated shapes. You can reliably observe such vivid displays in places like Iceland (although it’s usually cloudy there) or in dark, dry parts of Alaska (see Special Interest Tours.com to join me on our yearly expeditions which we’ve held since the 1990’s). Normally the Mid-Hudson Valley’s displays are no more than colorless glows. Cameras hugely enhance any shapes and colors so that the images people post give incorrect impressions of what anyone actually saw in the sky.
New star or nova: This year many in the media raved about an expected nova named T Corona Borealis which supposedly will be “a new brightest star in the sky.” Which sounds wonderful. In truth, this once-every-80 years “new star,” which may appear for a few hours or a few nights in September or October, will only attract attention if you know exactly where to look. That’s because at least 40 other stars will be brighter than it will ever get, and if your eye is indeed drawn to the night’s 43rd brightest star, good for you, and let me know who you are because we can use another lecturer on our tours.
On the other hand, let’s get positive and list the night’s true spectacles. Naked Eye: Everyone’s swept away by the summer and autumn Milky Way under unspoiled skies far from urban areas. It’s why we conduct tours to special parts of the Atacama desert. But open tree-less patches of the Catskills and Adirondacks will do quite nicely.
Eclipses: The best by far is the total solar eclipse, like the one seen in Vermont and Plattsburgh on April 8. Unfortunately, the next one in our region won’t happen until 2079. But traveling overseas would let you observe a solar totality seven or eight times a decade, if you’re lucky with the clouds.
With a good telescope: The two most reliable crowd pleasers are the planet Saturn and the Moon when its phase is within a few days of half moon. They enchant everyone and anyone. I’m still not bored after a half century. Serious observers are also captivated by deep-space wonders like star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies, the number of fascinating objects being proportional to the observer’s passion for the night sky.
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