95%+ of the time you look up at the moon, you’re seeing a lune shape. Many hundreds of years ago, mathematicians were way into using algebra to ‘square’ shapes that weren’t, well, originally square. Triangles, circles, polygons, you name it – they wanted to square them. And Hippocrates of Chios was the first to do this with a lune back in 440 B.C.

Now, I’d like to come clean to you and say that I don’t know why these mathematicians were compelled to do this squaring thing. I’m sure there was a very good reason that is now used in all sorts of engineering feats – and if you do know why they did this, please do let me know!

But I decided to assign the lune as the Mathnificent WoW because I wanted a natural segue into alerting you about the appearance of the Blue Supermoon that will show itself tomorrow, August 30th.

First off, a blue moon happens about every 2.5 to 3 years since a moon’s cycle is 30days so, using the Gregorian calendar of modern times, it takes that amount of rotation time to fit a full moon in the first & last couple of days of that month.

Secondly, this particular blue moon will be at a relatively close distance to our planet and, therefore, will appear to be quite large. As noted in the most recent KLM* essay, the orbit of the moon is not circular – it’s a superellipse, more oval-like – so the frequency of this closeness of the moon to our planet is a bit irregular (compared to the regularity of a blue moon).

All of this is to say that the appearance of a Blue Supermoon is infrequent; the next one will occur in January 2037.

Apparently the month of August has been – for moi – abundant with geometry, with all my writing of planets and shapes, superpositions and superellipses, and the math that underlines alllll of it. I say, channel all that math into the cosmos, take this as some sort of (super?) alignment of power, and go talk to the moon.