After the nightly shooting stars of San Lorenzo, Sky hosts another unavoidable event: Appointment Sunday, August 22nd on the night of the blue moon. Look at the color of our satellite, it will always be the same, but only interested in the calendar defined as the third full moon of a season that runs the days. An extraordinary but rare event, which occurs almost every two and a half years: next in 2024.
Brilliant and spectacular, the full moon of August 22 illuminates the sky in conjunction with the two major planets Jupiter and Saturn. The trio can be seen with the naked eye from all over Italy, weather permitting, and can be admired as they march in procession over Rome and its monuments.Dual telescopeAlso, it starts at 20.30 on the Ansa Science & Technology Channel.
“On average our month has a full moon because our satellite takes 29.5 days or a month to complete its orbit. For this reason – explains astronomer Gianluca Masi, head of the virtual telescope – it happens from time to time, we have 13 full moons a year.” The name ‘Blue Moon’ was used in the Anglo-Saxon world to refer to the ‘extra’ moon. In the 1930s, the Maine Agrarian Almanac used this period specifically to mark the third full moon of a season that offered four seasons. This definition was later misunderstood by the editor of Sky & Telescope magazine in the 1940s, thus enabling the Blue Moon definition to be spread as the second full moon in the same month.
August 22, 2021 is a true blue moon, in the truest sense of the word: this is the third full moon of 2021 this summer, which has already given us two full moons (June 24 and July 24) and still has a quarter to September 21st .
22 August Moon – Adds Palo WolpiniItalian Amateur Astronomers Association (Uai) – Allows even the less experienced to easily identify the two giant planets in the sky, Jupiter and Saturn, which peak in the south at midnight: after a few days of their resistance, they appear larger and brighter than usual. “
