Seigo­nie Mo­hammed

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

Sky­watch­ers across Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider Caribbean may want to look up this week­end as a rel­a­tive­ly rare lu­nar event, known as a “Blue Moon,” ris­es to­day.

De­spite the name, the moon will not ac­tu­al­ly ap­pear blue. In­stead, the term refers to the sec­ond full moon oc­cur­ring with­in a sin­gle cal­en­dar month; an event that on­ly hap­pens every few years be­cause of the tim­ing of the moon’s or­bit around Earth.

May 2026 be­gan with a full moon on May 1 and will end with an­oth­er to­mor­row, mak­ing the sec­ond one a Blue Moon.

The oc­cur­rence al­so means that 2026 will have 13 full moons in­stead of the usu­al 12.

As­tronomers say the phe­nom­e­non is linked to the moon’s nat­ur­al cy­cle, which lasts rough­ly 29-and-a-half (29.5) days. Be­cause that cy­cle does not per­fect­ly match the mod­ern cal­en­dar, some months oc­ca­sion­al­ly con­tain two full moons.

This week­end’s full moon al­so comes with an ad­di­tion­al as­tro­nom­i­cal dis­tinc­tion. It will be what sci­en­tists call a “mi­cro-moon,” mean­ing the moon will be near the far­thest point from Earth in its el­lip­ti­cal or­bit when it be­comes ful­ly il­lu­mi­nat­ed.

As a re­sult, the moon may ap­pear slight­ly small­er and dim­mer than a typ­i­cal full moon. How­ev­er, the dif­fer­ence is sub­tle and may not be im­me­di­ate­ly no­tice­able to ca­su­al ob­servers with­out pho­tographs or di­rect com­par­isons.

While Blue Moons are un­com­mon, they are not ex­cep­tion­al­ly rare. On av­er­age, they oc­cur once every two to three years.

The pop­u­lar phrase “once in a blue moon” has helped ce­ment the event in pop­u­lar cul­ture as a sym­bol of rar­i­ty or some­thing that does not hap­pen of­ten.

The ex­act ori­gins of the term re­main un­cer­tain. Some his­to­ri­ans trace it to cen­turies-old folk­lore and ear­ly cal­en­dar sys­tems, while oth­ers point to un­usu­al at­mos­pher­ic con­di­tions that may have oc­ca­sion­al­ly giv­en the moon a bluish tint fol­low­ing vol­canic erup­tions or large fires.

For Caribbean sky­watch­ers, weath­er con­di­tions will ul­ti­mate­ly de­ter­mine your abil­i­ty to view the moon, but if skies re­main clear, the moon­rise could of­fer a strik­ing end-of-month spec­ta­cle and a re­minder of the rhythms con­stant­ly un­fold­ing above the Earth.