The moon rises over East London
Posted on 03/20/2011 10:11:56 AM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets
The moon rises over East London
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Go to the Daily Mail website to see the rest. Worth seeing. I'll attribute the squashed look in that picture to refraction until someone convinces me otherwise.
The moon is being misshapen by global warming.
I was wondering about that ... it looks stepped on!
I knew it was my fault. The rate of transfer of rotational energy from the Earth to Moon by tidal braking is estimated at a billion watts. This causes the earth’s rotation to slow down by about 0.002 seconds/day/century and the radius of the moon’s orbit to increase by 1.5”/year. We truly are puny on a cosmic scale.
The moon is being misshapen by global warming.
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NO NO NO! Everybody knows it is because of second-hand smoke. Jeez!
Boosh’s fault.
Just a cheesy poof on the camera lens....
heheheh.
Off my back porch last night, it appeared somewhat SMALLER than normal. What’s the deal?
I thought it was my second-hand smoke bombs that were doing that! LOL!
There is an odd perceptual illusion. Most people think the moon looks larger near the horizon than when it is higher in elevation. What time did you look?
The illusion is sometimes explained by claiming that people think of the sky as a something like a low vaulted ceiling, so objects on the horizon are perceived as farther away, on the other side of the room as it were, objects overhead as closer.
I looked out about an hour after it rose so it wasn’t that high yet. This was nothing, zero, nada.
I'm not joining kill-joy nation.
My wife took your position, she thought it looked bigger and brighter on Friday, the day before totality than on Saturday. It's sort of like “Mars bigger than anytime in the last 60,000 years.” No big deal, but fun and it piques interest in astronomy.
Ah, well then. I thought I had missed something. There’s been larger ones recently - I’m thinking the last full moon appeared much larger.
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| From Lunar Pioneer 4 |
Like Viking settlements in Maritime Canada abandoned centuries before Columbus, forty years after the Apollo era six lunar module descent stages stand lonely near the foot prints where twelve Americans became the first to scratch the lunar surface. Now as then, there are those who question the value of exploring the Moon. The unquestioned scientific value of those earlier excursions was eclipsed by their geopolitical triumph. But, in the early years of the 21st century we have discovered better reasons for returning to the Moon than during the century prior to Apollo. The Moon appears to be an essential key to Deep Space, to our understanding the history of the Solar System, and no understanding of Earth can hope to be complete before a proper exploration of Earth's Moon.
This month’s full moon is 2% larger than last month’s or next month’s.
An interesting fact: Eclipses can be total, partial or annular. A total eclipse occurs when the moon completely blocks the sun, a partial when the shadow of the moon misses the earth, but the moon still appears to be at least partially between the earth and sun. An annular eclipse occurs when the apparent diameter of the moon is smaller than the apparent diameter of the sun. The distance from the earth to moon and sun constantly changes, but the moon relatively much more so.
Whether a particular eclipse will be annular or total depends on the relationship of the new moon to the perigee. When the full moon is near perigee, the current situation, the new moon will be near apogee (far from earth) and one would expect any eclipses to be annular and indeed there will be an annular eclipse on May 20, next.
Below: Closeup of "Super Moon" with comparison to the constellation Equis Major. (© 2011 NASA)
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