Full Moon on Friday Is a Blue Moon: Here's Why

Full Moon on Friday Is a Blue Moon: Here's Why

                           

                                                 

On Friday, much of the world will have the opportunity to observe a Blue Moon: A somewhat rare occurrence that doesn't have anything to do with the moon's color.

During most years, the Earth experiences 12 full moons, one in each month. But some years, such as 2015, have 13 full moons, and one of those "extra" lunar displays gets the label of Blue Moon.

The lunar or synodic month (full moon to full moon) averages 29.530589 days, which is shorter than every calendar month in the year except for February. Those extra one-half or one-and-one-half days accumulate over the year, causing some years to have 13 full moons rather than 12. 

Thought to be called "blue" after an old English term meaning "betrayer," a Blue Moon is an extra full moon that occurs due to a quirk of the calendar. 

Credit: Karl Tate,

To see what I mean, here is a list of full-moon dates in 2015: Jan. 5, Feb. 3, March 5, April 4, May 4, June 2, July 2, July 31, Aug. 29, Sept. 28, Oct. 27, Nov. 25 and Dec. 25. In 2016, the first full moon falls on Jan. 23, and each calendar month has only one full moon.

The expression "once in a blue moon" has a long history of being used to describe rare events; but it was also used in the Maine Farmers' Almanac to describe the third full moon in a season that has four (normally, a three-month season will only have three full moons).

In 1946, Sky & Telescope magazine published an article that misinterpreted the older definition, defining a Blue Moon as the second full moon in a calendar month. This has become the most recent and perhaps most widely accepted definition of a Blue Moon. And hence, the full moon on July 31 is referred to as a Blue Moon, because it was preceded by the full moon on July 2. By this definition, a Blue Moon occurs roughly once every 2.7 years.

The full moon appears to last for at least the length of one night, but technically speaking, it is an instantaneous event: It occurs when the sun, Earth and moon fall close to a straight line. It takes place at the same instant everywhere in the world, whether the moon is above or below the horizon.

The full moon on July 31 occurs at exactly 6:43 a.m. EDT (1043 GMT).

So, when you look at the Blue Moon on Friday morning, don't expect to see a different color scheme (although it is possible for the moon to appear to have a bluish hue). Just be aware that the so-called Blue Moon is a byproduct of the contrast between the calendar month and the lunar month.

Mystery Solved? Why Pluto's Big Moon Charon Has a Red Pole

The dark red pole on Pluto's largest moon Charon may be some of the dwarf planet's own siphoned-off atmosphere. Images and data captured by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft suggest that the reddish region at the top of the moon could be the frozen-out atmosphere from Pluto.

'The dead of winter'

The thin, nebulous atmosphere of Pluto was detected from Earth before New Horizons reached the dwarf planet this month, but Charon showed no signs of hosting anything similar. While tiny Pluto can cling to an atmosphere for a time, it doesn't have the gravity to keep it from slowly slipping away. Pluto and Charon are similar in size, causing many scientists to refer to it as a binary planet system.

As Pluto slowly releases its atmosphere, Charon may be close enough to capture it for a brief period. Although the gases from the dwarf planet would disperse evenly across the moon and fall upon the surface, the regions of the moon heated by sunlight may be too warm to allow it to freeze on the surface. Given the low gravity of the tiny moon, the atmosphere that escaped from Pluto may also escape from the smaller Charon. The material may only be capable of freezing out at the winter pole, pointed away from the sun.

"Only where the dead of winter is, where it hasn't seen the sun for a long time," Randy Gladstone, New Horizons co-investigator and atmospheres team theme leader, said.

In these regions, known as cold traps, the charged particles could freeze onto the surface, creating the reddish crust. As Pluto and its moons travel around the sun in its 248-Earth year orbit, Charon could continue to siphon material from its companion, freezing it onto its pole.

Given the slow leakage rate of Pluto's atmosphere, Gladstone, of the Southwest Research Insitute, said back-of-the-envelope calculations performed by the team suggest the red spot could have taken about a million years to form.

However, he stressed this was tentative. New Horizons revealed that Charon's surface boasted far fewer craters than anticipated, suggesting that the icy moon is being constantly resurfaced. Depending on the frequency of that process, whose source scientists remain uncertain of, Pluto's frozen-out atmosphere could have had less time to crystalize on the moon's pole before resurfacing hid all traces of the exchange.

This artist's concept depicts the interaction of the solar wind with Pluto's tenuous atmosphere, which is predominantly nitrogen. Some of the molecules in the atmosphere are swept away from Pluto and escape into space.

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Sunshine through the atmosphere

Gladstone said the idea, which he attributed to Grundy, was proposed not long ago but continued to seem more likely as they examined the evidence. Earlier last week, more than 50 people on the New Horizons team gathered together to discuss the idea, which seemed to be gaining ground.

An alternate theory suggests that the darker terrain could be a geological feature, a large basin. Gladstone said the two could both be true; material from Pluto could be collecting within Charon's polar basin to form the red crust.

"There are probably other theories that don't involve Pluto at all," he said.

Both Grundy and Gladstone expressed their hope that the answer would not be long in coming. New Horizons collected an enormous amount of data as it flew by Pluto in the days around July 14. Ultimately, the information will take 16 months to come to Earth, thanks to a transmission rate slower than a dial-up Internet connection.

However, one of the key signs should come out early this week, if it hasn't already landed on Earth. After the spacecraft flew by Pluto, it turned to capture the dwarf planet as it passed in front of the sun. While the bulk of the body completely blocked the light, the atmosphere around it caused a slight dimming that should allow scientists to determine its components and how thick it is. A similar observation was taken of Charon.

Before New Horizons reached the Pluto system, scientists performed similar observations from Earth using a distant star. These measurements showed no atmosphere on Charon, placing an upper constraint of 1 microbar on any potential atmosphere.

According to Gladstone, the observations performed by New Horizons will be able to register an atmosphere on the moon as much as 1,000 times fainter than could be detected from Earth. If Charon has an atmosphere as low as about 1 nanobar, he said the spacecraft should register it. (One bar is approximately equal to atmospheric pressure on Earth at sea level.) Gladstone hopes to see all of the results of the occultation by the end of September.

Another measurement collected by the spacecraft that will help to prove or disprove the idea of a frozen captured atmosphere is the measurements of the escape rate of Pluto's atmosphere. Although this rate has been estimated in the past, New Horizons will help provide a more solid number that will help the scientists better understand and model the process.

Finally, the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) will provide stereo images of Charon that will allow the scientists to measure the distance to the ground. This will help them to determine elevations across the planet — including at the potential northern polar basin.

All of this information could show that Charon is collecting pieces of Pluto's escaping atmosphere — or it could reveal something else entirely. Both Gladstone and Grundy stressed that the idea of a frozen captured atmosphere as the source of the red spot remains tentative. Confirmed results will come over time, as the scientists review the wealth of data pouring in from the tiny spacecraft traveling beyond Pluto.

'Impossible' rocket drive works and could get to Moon in four hours.

The British designed EM Drive actually works and would dramatically speed up space travel, scientists have confirmed

Interplanetary travel could be a step closer after scientist confirmed that an electromagnetic propulsion drive, which is fast enough to get to Moon in four hours, actually works.

The EM drive was developed by the British inventor Roger Shawyer nearly 15 years ago but was ridiculed at the time as being scientifically impossible.It produces thrust by using solar power to generate multiple microwaves that move back and forth in an enclosed chamber.This means that until something fails or wears down, theoretically the engine could keep running forever without the need for rocket fuel.

The drive, which has been linked to Star Trek's Impulse Drive, has ledt scientist scratching their heads because it defies one of the fundamental concepts of physics - the conservation of momentum - which states that if something is propelled forward, something must be pushed in the opposite direction.So the force inside the chamber should cancel each other out. 

However in recent years Nasa has confirmed that they believe it works and this week Martin Tajmar, a professor and chair for Space Systems at Dresden University of Technology in Germany also showed that it produces thrust.The drive is capable of producing thrust several thousand time greater than a standard photon rocket and could get to Mars within 70 days or Pluto in 18 months. A trip to Alpha Centauri, which could take tens of thousands of years to reach right now,could be reached in just 100 years.

"Our test campaign cannot confirm or refute the claims of the EM Drive but intends to independently assess possible side-effects in the measurments methods used so far. "said Prod Tajmar in anew

"Nevertheless, we do observe thrust close to actual predictions after eliminating many possible error sources that should warrant further investigation into the phenomenon."

"Our measurements reveal thrust as expected from previous claims after carefully studying thermal and electromagnetic interferences. 

"If true, this could certainly revolutionize space travel."

Shawyer also claims that he is just a few months away from publishing new results confirming that his  drive works in a peer reviewed journal.

However scientist still have no idea how it actually works. Nasa suggested that it could have something to do with the technology manipulating subatomic particles  which constantly pop in and out of existence in empty space.

Prof Tajmar presented his findings to the 2015 American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics' Propulsion and Energy Forum and Exposition this Week.

NASA Finds Closest Earth Twin Yet in Haul of 500 Alien Planets.

NASA Finds Closest Earth Twin Yet in Haul of 500 Alien Planets

The artist's illustration compares Earth (left) to the newly discovered planet, Kepler-452b, which measures about 60 percent larger. Image released July 23, 2015.

Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle

Kepler-452b lies 1,400 light-years away, and is the only planet known in its solar system. It's about 60 percent wider than Earth, which gives it a "better than even" chance of being rocky, researchers said. The planet is probably about five times more massive than our own, making it a so-called "super Earth." It likely possesses a thick atmosphere, lots of water and active volcanoes.

The exoplanet completes one orbit every 385 days, so its year is only slightly longer than Earth's. And Kepler-452b circles a sunlike star that's just 10 percent bigger and 20 percent brighter than the one that hangs in Earth's sky.

"It would feel a lot like home, from the standpoint of the sunshine that you would experience," said Jon Jenkins, Kepler data analysis lead at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. (Jenkins led the team that discovered Kepler-452b.)

But Kepler-452b's star appears to be considerably older than the sun — 6 billion years, compared to 4.5 billion years.

"It’s awe-inspiring to consider that this planet has spent 6 billion years in the habitable zone of its star; longer than Earth," Jenkins said in a statement, referring to that just-right range of distances that could support the existence of liquid water on a world's surface. "That’s substantial opportunity for life to arise, should all the necessary ingredients and conditions for life exist on this planet."

Kepler-452b's existence was announced with the release of the latest Kepler catalog, which includes 521 new planet "candidates" dug out of the data the spacecraft gathered during its first four years of operation. (Kepler, which launched in March 2009, stopped observing under its original planet-hunting mission in May 2013, after the second of its four orientation-maintaining reaction wheels failed.)

Eleven of the 521 newfound candidates are, like Kepler-452b, less than twice as wide as Earth and reside in their host stars' habitable zone, researchers said.

Kepler's total haul of potential exoplanets is now nearly 4,700. Just 1,030 of these finds have been confirmed to date, but mission scientists expect that the vast majority — 90 percent or so — will end up being the real deal, just like Kepler-452b.

During its original mission, Kepler stared at more than 150,000 stars simultaneously, looking for tiny brightness dips caused by planets crossing these stars' faces. Kepler's dataset is therefore huge, and it has taken researchers a while to analyze it and address the main goal of the $600 million mission — determining how common Earth-like planets are across the Milky Way galaxy.

Analyses of Kepler observations to date suggest that about 20 percent of the Milky Way's stars harbor at least one rocky planet in the habitable zone, but this number will be revised or refined with additional study, researchers said.

"Continued investigation of the other candidates in this catalog and one final run of the Kepler science pipeline will help us find the smallest and coolest planets," the SETI Institute's Joseph Twicken, lead scientific programmer for the Kepler mission, said in a different statement. "Doing so will allow us to better gauge the prevalence of habitable worlds."

Indeed, the team plans to release the eighth Kepler catalog next year. Continued software improvements and the knowledge gained during previous analyses of the dataset should lead to more exciting finds by the mission science team — and by researchers who study the publicly archived data in the future, Coughlin said.

"I really expect that discoveries will be coming from Kepler for the next several decades," he said.