The moon rose to its peak appearing as a seasonal blue moon Tuesday night according to weather.com.
"There was a time, not long ago, when people saw blue moons almost every night. Full moons, half moons, crescent moons - they were all blue, except some nights when they were green," NASA's Tony Phillips wrote for Solar System Exploration weather.com reported. "The year was 1883, the year an Indonesian volcano named Krakatoa exploded."
According to Phillips, there was a blue moon when Mount St. Helens bubbled up in 1980, and the Philippines Mount Pinatubo event in 1991.
"The ash ... caused the unlikely shades, with particles large enough to 'strongly scatter red light, while allowing other colors to pass,'" Phillips wrote. "White moonbeams shining through the clouds emerged blue and sometimes green."
According to weather.com, Tuesday's moon was also not the second full moon this month which most people probably thought. Rather, it was the third of four seasonal blue moons in a season. There has not been one in about three years EarthSky reported. While Tuesday's moon did not have a blue color, it is possible for it to have it.
The moon reached its highest level at 9:45 p.m. EST weather.com reported.
Blue moons occur more often than "once in a blue moon," with the next seasonal blue moon scheduled to occur May 21, 2016.
Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart popularized the term "blue moon" in their 1934 song, which Elvis Presley, and Billie Holiday each sang.
