{"id":610676,"date":"2026-05-29T17:05:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T17:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/610676\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T17:05:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T17:05:19","slug":"blue-moon-2026-when-to-see-mays-rare-second-full-moon-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/610676\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Moon 2026: When to see May’s rare second full Moon rise"},"content":{"rendered":"

The most well-known definition of a Blue Moon is the second full Moon to occur in a calendar month. <\/p>\n

The lunar cycle is 29.5 days long where as most months are 30 or 31 days long. <\/p>\n

Eventually these cycles catch each other up to produce two full Moons in a month -usually on either of the first couple of days, followed by another at the very end.<\/p>\n

This definition – also known as a “monthly Blue Moon” – is actually a fairly modern interpretation dating back just 80 years. <\/p>\n

According to astronomers at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, external<\/a>, it is actually an astronomically incorrect definition, first printed in a 1946 edition of Sky & Telescope magazine and perpetuated by the game Trivial Pursuit in the 1980s.<\/p>\n

The more accurate definition is a “seasonal Blue Moon” which occurs when there are four full Moons in an astronomical season instead of the usual three. The third Moon of the season is known as a “Blue Moon”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The most well-known definition of a Blue Moon is the second full Moon to occur in a calendar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":610677,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-610676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/610677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}