[title]
Halloween will be extra spooky this year (not just because it's 2020) with a Hunter's Blue Moon rising on Saturday morning.
At 10:51am, the full moon will hit peak illumination, glowing a golden hue before transitioning to a bright white. You likely won't really see it until it rises at 6:13pm, though.
Why is it called a "blue moon" if it's not blue, you ask?
It was a "calendrical goof" made in Sky & Telescope magazine in March 1946 that took off, according to The Washington Post.
The first full moon after the harvest moon (which happened on October 1 this year) is always called a "hunter's moon," since that is the time of year when everyone is stocking up for the long winter ahead, according to the Old Farmer's Almanac.
The upcoming full moon is also a micro moon, meaning that it is at its farthest point away from the Earth and looks smaller and a little less bright than a supermoon.
Indeed, a blue moon happens rarely—"once in a blue moon" as they say. The next one isn't expected until August 30, 2023. Even rarer is a full moon on Halloween, which happens every 19 years, the Old Farmer's Almanac says. So, we won't see this again until 2039.
Blue moons on Halloween only happen at most four times in a century.
To celebrate this rare occurrence, we've rounded up a handful of gorgeous photographs of full moons rising over NYC:
Most popular on Time Out
- The most haunted places in NYC
- The 101 best sex scenes of all time
- A former Eleven Madison Park chef opens an underground fried chicken restaurant
- Here’s how to track your mail-in ballot this year in NYC
- The best Halloween events in NYC for 2020
Want to know what’s cool in the city before your friends do? Sign up to our newsletter for the latest and greatest from NYC and beyond.