Keep your eyes on the sky as blue ‘supermoon’ rises

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — You can only see it once in a blue moon so, turn your eyes to the sky as the moon will be a bit brighter and larger Wednesday night.

“It’s fun to have those kinds of milestones in your life, where this doesn’t come around very often so take a look at it,” Jason Steffen, a UNLV physics teacher said.

He said it’s a unique phenomenon called the “Blue Supermoon.”

“The moon orbits the Earth every 28 days so occasionally you’ll have two times where the moon is full in a given calendar month so that’s what a blue moon is, the supermoon aspect of it is because the moon’s orbit is elliptical and it doesn’t make a perfect circle so sometimes the moon is closer to the Earth than it is at other times and when it’s closer to the Earth, it’s slightly larger in the sky,” Steffen said.

Many different cultures and communities also have different beliefs and rituals around the Blue Supermoon, like Charlie Hanks, the owner of Blaspheme Boutique who specializes in witchcraft.

“With this being a Super Blue Moon, it’s so rare that we want to make sure that we’re focusing on our energy and intention,” Hanks explained. “Different witches like I mentioned have different practices and in other cultures like Native Americans they have different meanings for the moon as well.”

So why do we associate the full moon with crazy behavior?

“I think for us as our culture we tend to put a lot of belief into things and I feel if we put a lot of belief into something, that makes it more powerful much like mercury retrograde and it becomes powerful because we focus so much on it being a negative thing that happens and then there’s jokes on it on the internet,” Hanks added.

According to NASA, Saturn’s bright glow will also be visible near the moon, as it will be the closest and brightest of 2023.

The next Blue Supermoon won’t be visible until 2037.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KLAS.