I like noticing things…

Posted on December 14, 2019December 14, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Earth, Moon, Night sky, Observation, Science, Space, Sun, Thinking, Thought experiment, Working things outLeave a comment

For instance, this is the just after full moon. Its in the same place in the sky as it was over the last few days, but not at the same time! I know the Earth and Moon orbit each other, and the moon is tidally locked with us. Which means it has one side always facing towards us. But as I say its in about the same place, but each day its a bit later, so after 5 days it’s moved from being there at 2am to 6am…..

Think about it. The Earth rotates in 24 hours, if the Moon is coming up later each day it must be going round the Earth at a certain speed. I don’t have the mathematic skill to work that out but if it takes 6 days to move 4 hours then if you multiply 4×6 you get 24 (hours) for it to end up in the same place so if you multiply 5(days)x6 you get 30, which is approximately a month to get to the same place in the sky and appear again at 2am. The Moon waxes and wanes while doing this. From that you can tell approximately where the sun is in relationship to us. If the half moon, and all the other phases are facing one way before full moon, the Sun is on the lighter side of the Moon. If its curved the other way as the moon starts to go away from full, then it’s on the other side. You can guess when the sun will rise from this, the smaller the area of brightness the more to the side of the Earth the sun must be. I can’t work out whether the sun would be rising sooner or later depending on its phase. I can see in my mind that if you were looking at both Earth and Moon from space they would be lit from the same direction, but sometimes you see the Moon in daylight, so I don’t know how that works. I think I would need to start drawing very long thin triangles, based on say a quarter of a centimeter on one side and 93 centimeters on the other two to work something out (based on the ratio of distances from the Earth to the Moon and the Earth to the Sun – .5:93…this is just scaling down the siz. I’m thinking in miles because I don’t know the distances in kilometers…. Its all got a bit complicated….

I remember once watching the moon every day for a week from the top of the hill, each day it got closer to the setting sun, till finally there was almost an eclipse. Somewhere on Earth there must have been an eclipse in the following day or so, but we missed it because the sun had already set.

Pattern

Posted on November 29, 2019November 29, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Duplicate, Fun, Mirrored, Moon, Pattern, Photo, Playing, TreesLeave a comment

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When you duplicate a photo you can get some interesting effects, like this duplicated photo of the moon through trees and looking out of a wet window. Somehow I see xrays of brains, or skulls, or pictures of alien twins, or strange little aliens with outstretched arms.

I remember looking at flock wallpaper and seeing animals, or looking at clouds and seeing dragons or elephants.

There is a name for this, but I don’t remember. I must have a very active visual mind.

Grab the moon

Posted on November 12, 2019November 12, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Environment, Humour, Life, Monster, Moon, Sci fi, Short story, Space, Story, ThinkingLeave a comment

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It wasn’t a cloud, but the dark shape was reaching out, obscuring the moon. Something that had eyes, that twinkled in the moonlight. Something that had hands or arms to grab, what? The moon is a quarter of a million miles away. The object must either be close to Earth and not that big, or if it was close enough to capture the Moon then it would be millions of miles across.

Suddenly the light was blotted out. The huge shape turned and fled, the moon was gone. Its gravitational power gone too. Earth, which had its North and South poles tipped away from the vertical by a celestial accident in the past, now started to twist and dip. The planet becoming unstable and dangerous. People could only try to survive, and make signs and march to the chant ‘bring back our moon’. But nothing happened…..

Black cat

Posted on November 7, 2019 Posted in Cat, UncategorizedTagged Cat, Digital art, Fun, Life, Moon, Play, Poem, Poetry, SkyLeave a comment

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Black cat,

staring eyes

Making spells

Flying high.

Chase the moon,

Race the sky.

Jumping down

To the street.

Chasing mice,

Nice to eat?

Having fun,

Being quick

Oh so neat.

Cat familiar,

Friend of mine.

Making magic

Oh so fine…

Finished, Jupiter with moon.

Posted on September 25, 2019September 25, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Acrylic, Acrylic on canvas, Clouds, Colour, Fun, Jupiter, Moon, Planet, Space. Art2 Comments

Decided this is finished, not going to overwork it. I added a moon and its shadow. I wanted to keep the colours fresh and interesting. I liked the idea of tipping it at an angle. We tend to have images of planets on a horizontal plane because that is the way the solar system rotates ‘on the plane of the ecliptic’, but if you were on an asteroid skimming past you wouldn’t necessarily be travelling in the same plane as the planets.

Drawing Jupiter

Posted on September 25, 2019September 25, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Artrage oils, Design, Digital drawing, Finger painting, Jupiter, Moon, Planet, Surface patternsLeave a comment

I do like drawing and painting planets Untitled60_003

This was drawn in ArtRage oils. I used the dry brush and metallic setting for it except for the moon where I turned the metallic option off. You can’t paint smoothly with it but you can get an impression of what you want to depict. The largest brush size is the size of the moons shadow, so to build up the background you have to shade backwards and forwards to cover the whole picture. This is glorified finger painting!

You will notice the top left corner is lighter than the bottom right. That is because the app is set up to have graduated shading across the picture. There is some difficulty drawing accurately on a screen with your finger, especially when the surface is apparently fluid. The result is the moon in the bottom right corner does not look quite right. The image is imagined, not taken from a photo. The moon is not identifiable but would be one of the four seen by Galileo. (the four biggest), (no I can’t remember their names!)

Earth

Posted on July 29, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Earth, Life, Moon, Pale blue dot, Pattern, Poem, Poetry, SkyLeave a comment

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A poem based on my painting of Earth,

Earth

Spinning in space,

Tipped slightly

So we have seasons

Without the moon

We would spin out

Of control.

Earth

Pale blue dot

Clouds flying

Tides swelling

Faults cracking

Volcanos spewing Ash,

Life growing,

Earth

Green and blue and brown

Earth.

Enthralled

Posted on July 20, 2019July 20, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged 50th anniversary, Anniversary, Apollo 11, Earth, Environment, Memory, Moon, Poem, Poetry, Science, Space, Space raceLeave a comment

Apollo 11

50 years on,

Watching the landing,

Seeing the moon

In another light.

I was young when it happened

I was allowed to stay up.

Marvelling at Man’s bravery

And ability

To fly to the moon.

Hold up my thumb

Moon has gone.

If they did the same

earth was gone too.

Infinity of space

We are miniscule.

Apollo as insect jumping to a new stone.

Taking a tiny step into the void.

Perhaps we will go further,

But life remains precious,

Our bubble got bigger

But remains tiny

In the shape of space.

Watching Apollo 13

Posted on July 19, 2019July 19, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Apollo, Apollo 13, Life, Moon, Science, SpaceLeave a comment

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One of my favourite space films. Up there with the Sci-Fi classic 2001 a Space Odyssey.

In this case the film is based on the ill fated flight of Apollo 13. The crew of three were on the way to the moon when one of their oxygen tanks burst when it was stirred. They were left 3/4 of the way to the moon with a shortage of air to breathe. They had to work out how to navigate the space ship, work out how to clear the CO2 that was poisoning their air, work out how to use the equipment with almost no battery power and successfully splash down on the Earth. It was only on the way back that they saw the damage to their service module that they saw the damage and whether the heat shield that protected them from friction from the atmosphere would work.

I guess it’s on because of the 50th anniversary of landing on the moon. Very good film.

Moon and Jupiter

Posted on July 7, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Branches, Crescent, Jupiter, Life, Moon, Photo, Sun, Trees, View, WinterLeave a comment

Well you could barely see them really, but a few months ago , in winter, one dawn I saw the crescent moon and the planet Jupiter. The planet was up on a diagonal from the curve of the moon. Like a parachute blowing out of control in a strong wind, canopy downward and the planet swinging up and away into the morning sky. The branches made it hard to see, hard to locate, and as the wind was blowing the view was obstructed by the swaying trees. Most of the time the planet would be visible and the moon not and then vice versa.

So why am I telling you this? Because I spotted the photo and I wanted to practice describing it. I’ve mostly spoken about the Moon and Jupiter, not about the surroundings. The horizon. Is hidden by the line of shop roofs and tree branches. The sky has lightened but the sun is not up. The position of the sun (down and to the left) is indicated by the illumination on the moon (trust me it was a crescent curved downwards to the left). So that’s it. Not a story, a description.

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: Moon

I like noticing things…

Pattern

Grab the moon

Black cat

Finished, Jupiter with moon.

Drawing Jupiter

Earth

Enthralled

Watching Apollo 13

Moon and Jupiter