The simplest of things are so often the most enjoyable ~
Last weekend,we had the pleasure of watching the moon rise up behind Stradbroke Island during our evening walk…
And the following morning, woke up to this simply beautiful sunrise
What a weekend 
Have a good one!
At the end of January, 2010 here in Australia we had a glorious ‘blue moon’
Moon over Moreton Bay January 2010
Not literally of course!
The term ‘blue’ moon in recent times has come to refer to the second of two full moons occurring in a single calendar month. This can only happen when there is a full moon early in the month so as to allow for the twenty nine and a half day lunar cycle to complete its revolution before the 30 or 31 day calendar month is out.
When two ‘blue moons’ appear in the same year they will occur in January and March as they are separated by February that has but 28 days ~ This ‘phenomena’ occurred in Australia in 2010.
There isn’t a single ‘original’ meaning of the term ‘blue moon’ but to understand any of them some mathematics is required ~
If one multiplies out the 29.5 days (lunar cycle) by 12 (calendar months) one gets 354 days, which equates to a ‘spare’ 11 days in each 365 day calendar year. This means every two or three years there will be a 13th moon (or to be precise every nineteen years there are seven).
One origination of the term ‘blue moon’ comes from the Middle English word belewe that means not only ‘blue’ but also ’betray’. The clergy who use the moon’s cycle to calculate when lent and Easter should occur had the problem that a 13th moon every few years would throw out their calculations and so 500 years ago this additional moon was referred to as a belewe moon meaning a ‘betrayer moon‘.
Amusingly, what has now become today’s ‘common usage’ term for a ‘blue moon’ (two full moons in the same calendar month) has evolved from an incorrect statement in the March 1946 edition of the ‘Sky and Telescope‘!
The power of the printed word! 
How does the moon affect the tides? Spring tides… Neap Tides… Click here
Living by the sea I’ve become very aware of the ever changing tides… their times and their heights.
Governed by the moon, there are two high tides and two low tides in each twenty-four hour period, with the lunar cycle taking twenty-nine and a half-days to complete. This means that each day the tide occurs 50 minutes later than the same event on the preceding day.
Moon Map by Johannes Hevelius dated 1645
When the moon is full, and then two weeks later when we have a new moon, the gravitational pull due to the moon, the earth and the sun all being aligned results in a much higher high tide and a much lower low tide.
Alignment of Sun, Moon & Earth create Spring tides
These tides are called Spring tides. This is nothing to do with the season, but is rather from the old English word ‘springan’ to well up.
The Bay of Fundy in Canada has the claim to fame of having the largest range between its high and low spring tides, which reaches nearly 16 metres. Avonmouth in the Bristol Channel, UK comes in second with a range in excess of 15 metres.
Here, in the bay off Brisbane in Queensland, Australia the difference between high and low spring tide is a mere 2.5 metres but at low tide on these weeks the bay looks as though someone has pulled out the plug as the water drains far away exposing the silty sand.
In North-Western Australia where the spring tidal range reaches 10 metres it creates a natural phenomenon called ‘Staircase to the Moon’. For three nights each month between March and October, when the full moon creates an exceptionally low spring tide, it then reflects off the exposed mudflats of Roebuck Bay, Broome to create a beautiful optical illusion of a stairway reaching up to the moon!
Staircase to the Moon, Western Australia
On alternate weeks between the full and new moon, when the sun, earth and moon are at right angles to each other resulting in a less intense gravitational pull there are Neap tides. Neap is derived from the old English word ‘nep’ meaning to nip in the bud. On these weeks, here in Queensland, there is then only a metre difference between our high and low tide so happily there is nearly always something left to paddle in!
For the time and height of tides here in Australia:
Time and tide wait for no man 
Interested in ‘Blue Moons’? ~ Click here
