Despite the media making much of celebrating a ‘blue moon’ on New Year’s Eve, the Full Moon did not occur in Australia until 5:14 am AEST today (6:14 am ADST) – January 1st, so Australia and New Zealand didn’t have a Full Moon on New Year’s Eve and, consequently, no ‘blue moon’ either.
When, infrequently, two Full Moon’s occur within the same month, the second Full Moon is called a ‘blue moon’ because it does not happen very often (as in, “once in a blue moon”). Australia’s ‘blue moon’ will not occur until 4:19 pm AEST on 30th January. The Full Moon earlier today did include, however, a partial lunar eclipse.
The media made this mistake by using 7:14 pm Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) as a reference for this Full Moon, completely overlooking the fact that Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST) is 10 hours ahead of GMT, and New Zealand Standard Time is 12 hours ahead. This type of error is a sound reason for moon planters to only use moon planting guides especially written for Australia and New Zealand. These include Easy Organic Gardening and Moon Planting (for 2010-2013) and Thomas Zimmer’s Astrological Calendar and Moon Planting Guide for 2010.
Incidentally, we also have a ‘blue moon’ in March this year. March’s first Full Moon occurs at 2:39 am AEST on the 1st March, and the ‘blue moon’ occurs at 12:27 pm AEST on the 30th. The following ‘blue moon’ is in August 2012 with the first Full Moon at 1:29 pm AEST on the 2nd, and the ‘blue moon’ just squeaking in at one minute to midnight AEST on the 31st. (Because of the time difference, New Zealanders miss out on this one.) After that we have to wait until July 2015 for another ‘blue moon’.