You can't see it, but a rare 'black moon' is due this week. How it happens.
The term "black moon" is more of a folksy name, not an official label in astronomy, says Earthsky.org. It's a rare occurrence, taking place once every 33 months.
In simple terms, a black moon is an extra new moon. (A new moon, one of the eight lunar phases, is the moon you can't see.) New moons happen when the moon is between the Earth and the sun. Its illuminated side faces away from Earth, which makes it invisible to us.
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The absence of reflected moonlight during a new moon makes stars and other celestial objects easier to see. That's when amateur astronomers can get out their telescopes or binoculars to study planets, stars and other deep-sky objects.
Black moons are unique because our 30- or 31-day calendar months are slightly different from 29.5-day lunar cycles. Astronomical seasons are also different, since lunar cycles don't fit neatly into them. The differences allow black moons to appear at irregular intervals.
Black moons are referenced like blue moons, which are defined as the third full moon in an astronomical season containing four full moons. (Full moons are moons that are fully illuminated.)
How are black moons defined?
Monthly black moon: A second new moon in a calendar month.
Seasonal black moon: The third new moon in an astronomical season with four new moons. There are four astronomical seasons, defined by the Earth's position in its solar orbit:
Astronomical seasons usually have three new moons. If a season has four new moons, the third is labeled a black moon.
SOURCE USA TODAY Network reporting and research; Reuters; NASA; space.com; iflscience.com; earthsky.org; livescience.com; National Geographic
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Dana Taylor: Is there an upside to novel ecosystems? Has your research allowed you to gain a deeper understanding about the future of life on this planet? Corey Tarwater: Novel ecosystems are our future, right, and they're a challenge because they're going to just increase into the future. Right. With continued change in climate and land use change and movement of people, we want to study them so that we understand how they function, who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in these environments? So I think the upside is that we can maintain some of these ecosystem functions, that we can have invasive trees that are really good at carbon storage. We can have non-native birds that are really good at pollination and seed dispersal. The upside is that there are some species that can help fill the role of some of these species that are going extinct. The downside is certainly that at the same time, these invasive species are causing global biodiversity loss. And so it's not, you're looking for a good silver lining once you've already created this environment with this novel ecosystem. So there's certainly, again, roles that species can play, non-native species can play to maintain these ecosystems. But in the ideal world, we'd also have areas where we can maintain these native communities as much as possible. So I think separating out what we mean by non-native versus invasive is really important. Invasive are bad, right? That's just what they are. But non-native don't have to be bad, right? They can actually be playing helpful roles in ecosystems. Dana Taylor: Finally, I know you recently returned from a trip to Hawaii. What's next for you and your team? Corey Tarwater: Our next steps are to experimentally remove some of these highly invasive species. So we've looked at how the role that these native and non-native species play in the ecosystem, and we understand what the birds like and how we can increase frugivory and all that type of stuff on the native plants. But now what we want to do is we want to remove some of these really highly invasive plant species, which is what restoration is doing now, and see what happens. Do the birds, do they eat something else? And if they eat something else, what do they eat? Do they eat the native plants or they just continue to eat the non-native plants? Can we create some sort of restoration area that it's going to encourage the birds to eat more native fruits? And so it's going to be these big crazy experiments where we're basically removing two of the worst invasive plant species on Oahu and looking to see how the birds respond, and if we can create an ideal kind of restoration sites for land managers to work with. Dana Taylor: It's fascinating. Corey, thank you so much for being on The Excerpt. Corey Tarwater: Thank you for having me. Dana Taylor: Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan for their production assistance. Our executive producers Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@ Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson be back tomorrow morning with another episode of USA TODAY's The Excerpt.
