2024年12月·第2套 英语六级长篇阅读（信息匹配） 第 1 篇 · 36–45 题答案与解析

It's invisible to us during the new moon, because our satellite is parked right between us and the sun; the so-called dark side of the moon is lit up like Las Vegas, but the side we can see is in shadow.

新月时月亮对我们是不可见的，因为我们的卫星正停在我们和太阳之间；月球所谓的“暗面”被照得像拉斯维加斯一样亮，而我们能看到的那一面则处在阴影中。

A moon can indeed take on a moody blue color, but this only happens when particles of just the right size disperse through the sky—and it has nothing to do with the moon's status as "blue". Big clouds of ash from volcanic eruptions or fires can do the trick, but it doesn't happen often, and the stars would certainly have to align for two such rare instances to occur at once.

月亮确实可以呈现一种忧郁的蓝色，但这种情况只发生在合适尺寸的颗粒在天空中扩散的时候——和月亮的“蓝月”身份毫无关系。火山爆发或火灾产生的大片灰云能做到这一点，但这种情况并不常发生，要两件如此罕见的事同时出现真得天时地利人和。

January's super blood wolf moon eclipse is super because the date lines up with the closest the moon will get to us during January, but the moon won't actually be at its closest for the year until February's supermoon, which you can expect plenty of undue excitement over.

1 月的超级血狼月食之所以“超级”，是因为日期对上了月亮在 1 月里离我们最近的时刻，但月亮要到 2 月的超级月亮时才真正达到全年最近的距离，到时你又能预期一波过度的兴奋。

As we'll explain below, there is nothing truly mysterious or otherwise special about this moon, and it will not look like a bloody wolf head in the sky or anything wild like that.

我们下面会解释，关于这个月亮其实没有任何真正神秘或特别之处，它也不会在天上看起来像一个血淋淋的狼头或别的什么疯狂的样子。

The moon can also look orange whenever it's rising or setting, or if it hangs low in the horizon all night—the light bouncing off of it has to travel through a thicker atmosphere there, which scatters more blue light away.

月亮在升起或落下时，或者整夜挂在地平线附近时，也会看上去呈橙色——因为从它反射出去的光必须穿过那里更厚的大气层，而较厚的大气层会把更多的蓝光散射掉。

Lots of websites will tell you that "wolf moon" is the traditional name of the first full moon of the year in "Native American" cultures, which is kind of a weird thing to claim given that there are 573 registered Tribal Nations in the US alone today, not to mention historically. The idea that hungry, howling wolves were such a universal constant in January that all of North America with its different cultures, geographies, and languages spontaneously came up with the same nickname is illogical.

很多网站会告诉你“狼月”是“美洲原住民”文化中一年第一次满月的传统名字，但这种说法挺奇怪——光今日美国就有 573 个注册部落，更别提历史上的部落了。“饥饿、嗥叫的狼”在 1 月是这样一种放之北美而皆准的常量，以至于不同文化、地理、语言的整个北美都自发想出同一昵称——这种说法不合逻辑。

The moon isn't always exactly the same distance from Earth, because its orbit isn't perfectly circular.

月亮和地球的距离并不总是一模一样，因为它的轨道并非完全是圆形。

Many cultures have traditional names for the full moon in a given month or season, so there's quite a list to draw from if you're trying to really juice up a story on a slightly-bigger-than-average view of the moon.

许多文化对特定月份或季节的满月都有传统名字，所以如果你想给一篇关于“略大于平均”的月亮观感的报道加点料，可选的名字相当多。

There are probably loads of folks who walk around pretending they totally know why that thing in the sky seems to get bigger and smaller at regular intervals but who totally do not.

可能有一大堆人到处走来走去，假装自己完全知道天上那玩意儿为什么看上去会有规律地变大变小，但其实完全不知道。

And while that's not necessarily special in an oh-gosh-get-out-and-look-at-it way, it's certainly special: a blue moon is a nickname for when two full moons fall in the same calendar month, and we hadn't previously had two in one year since 1999.

尽管这并不属于“哦天哪赶紧出门看”那种特别，但它确实算特别：蓝月是给“同一个日历月里出现两次满月”这种情况起的昵称，而我们上一次在一年里出现两次蓝月还是 1999 年。