Tag: Moon

Eclipse

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There is due to be an eclipse in North America tomorrow and some strange things are being written by people about it.  Anyone would think it had never happened before, when it’s a regular astronomical phenomenon.

We’ve had a couple in the UK over the last few decades and nothing bad happened, no ending of the world, no real catastrophes (except maybe Brexit!).

But humans are good at seeing portents. They tie religion to events and make up stories to fit the events. Centuries ago we could not predict the occurrence of eclipses and thought that things like dragons were swallowing the sun.

Some tips for viewing eclipses:

I viewed an eclipse in the UK in the 1990s by looking at its reflection in my car window as I had no viewing goggles. You can also see its reflection in water. And if you make a small hole in card or paper you can see multiple crescent moon shaped patterns on the surface it’s projected onto. (explanations of how to do this can be found on the net,) Remember DO NOT LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN! Even approaching totality when the moon is covering the majority of the sun you can damage your sight. You can be blinded by the light from the sun including ultraviolet light that can burn your retina without you feeling it.

The Moon landings

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What major historical events do you remember?

It was the summer of 1969. My dad got us up from bed so we could watch the moon landing on TV. I remember Patrick Moore explaining what was happening excitedly. Micheal Collins filming the moon lander from his vantage point in the command module, it was dropping down towards the surface of the moon, then the landers own camera as it seemed to creep down toward the surface, it’s retro rockets blowing away the lunar dust as its shadow started to fill the screen. Then “the Eagle has landed”….grainy black and white TV pictures…

Man had landed on the moon after a journey of about 250,000 miles. It doesn’t sound that far when you write it down. Did it only take 3 days to get there?

Then after a while Neil Armstrong climbed down the ladder and stepped onto Lunar regolith. “it’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. Nowadays there would be a proper speech, but it was fantastic to see both Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moons surface. I don’t remember any more than being utterly amazed….

Blue moon and super moon

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Moon doodle

It’s not blue and it’s not really super!

There is a super blue moon tonight and tomorrow night. All that means is that there are 13 full moons in this twelve month period and this August there are two in the same month. This is the second and ‘blue’ moon. The moon also happens to be at its closest approach to the Earth, a few thousand miles closer, so it appears slightly bigger in the sky. The moons orbit is elliptical, so it has two centres of gravity and so sometimes it appears closer and sometimes further away. The next super blue moon will be in 2037. There are lots of articles on the Internet about it today.

Population

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I was discussing the population explosion fears in the 1970’s with my friend Martha Kennedy here earlier on. She had written a really interesting post about her memories in the 1960’s. I’ll post a link to her post if I can.

But talking about it I remembered doing a collage with ripped up magazine pages. The Earth is at the bottom, a ribbon comes up off the Earth and has a queue or line of people moving up away into space. I can’t remember if they were heading towards the sun or the moon. I think the collage was in landscape mode but my digital canvas is orientated in portrait mode. I’m not sure whether the population had hit 4 or 6 billion… Now it’s over 8 billion. We are like a virus taking over the world….

I tried to post a link to Martha’s blog but it didn’t work sadly.

Evening Moon

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10x view of the moon with my phone. I wish I could have got a clearer view. I did think about changing the exposure, but I’m not exactly sure how as my phone is new and I don’t know how to change it to manual yet. Plus there was camera shake. It would be great to see some of the ‘seas’, or mare like the Sea of tranquility or the bay of rainbows. Also famous craters like Tycho, named after the astronomer Tycho Brahe. I could see darker areas visually but the exposure was on automatic. I will learn!

And the moon landed on his head….

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One of my Christmas presents was a night light, about 18 inches in diameter that is based on the moon. It lights up as a full moon but you can also set it to gently run through phases like the real moon with a remote control.

Last night I couldn’t sleep. The nightlight gives enough light, if you sit up in bed, to read a book by. So about six am I got the novel I’m reading out and read for about twenty minutes. Then I lay down to try and sleep. I reached up to turn out the light with the little switch at the base of it. Oops! I pushed too hard, the large plastic domed moon slid off the little nail it was loosely hooked on, it slid sideways as I tried to grab it, and bump! Hit my hubby on the head. He was fast asleep but shouted out wha? Then fell back to sleep. This morning after hooking the moon back up, I asked him if he remembered being hit by the moon. He replied he wondered what had happened? I said the Moon fell on him!

Waxing moon through firework smoke

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The moon is three quarters full and was setting behind a tree as midnight struck to end 2022. I tried to take a few photos but my automatic filter makes the moon too bright and is very overexposed. You cannot see its shape. So I tried using manual settings, with that I could get a little bit more definition, but it’s far too grainy. However you can see its not full. There was a mist or firework smoke drifting across the sky. More fireworks had gone off in a few minutes than we saw over the whole of November 5th. The cats were very scared. But it’s calmed down now.

Happy New year to you all.

He bought me… The Moon

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My hubby bought me the Moon yesterday. He knows I love astronomy. It’s a light that is domed so it looks like one side of the moon. It has a remote control and goes through phases as you press one of the buttons or scrolls through them if you press the other button, slowly waxing and waning as you watch it. It’s not astronomically accurate, just a rough surface with vague craters and marès painted on it. It’s only a nightlight, I put it in the bedroom and tried to read by it but it’s just too dim. But good for getting up in the middle of the night because it’s not too bright so it won’t wake my hubby up. X

Digital earth and moon

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This was an old drawing I did online a few years ago. It was at the website called Sketchfu (closed about five years ago). I’ve always loved astronomy and this was a good challenge to try and get a reasonably accurate drawing using very simple tools. The hardest thing was getting the image blurred enough to feel realistic. Colours were chosen from a couple of hundred choices. There were only five sized circular pens and a slider to alter the opacity. Plus an eraser to clear away mistakes. You could add layers so you could show your progress, or do a collaboration with other artists, the only real problem was the images took ages to load.