Starship Asterisk*

by **Guthers** » Tue Sep 14, 2021 3:43 pm

I'm catching up on some Apod's I missed from a year ago.

While we often read that it's only an illusion that makes the Moon appear larger near the horizon, it's not often pointed out that it really does appear bigger when directly, or nearly, overhead, being around 4000 miles or 6400 kilometres closer due to the curvature of the Earth.

Now for my Moon-related embarrassment! When I was an Astronomy student I had a lunar project which was to investigate the apparent shape when it was a very narrow crescent, in particular the extent of the shortening of the cusps. To do this I had to take photographs very early in the morning before sunrise, or just after sunset. For morning shots you had to spend the whole night at the observatory in North London, with no sleeping facilities, and with a supervisor, who would normally be a post-grad. You would have to spend the night working or playing computer games before your time slot came round.

One day in my newspaper I noticed the time of moonrise to be about 6am, just ½ an hour before the sun, which was perfect for my thin crescent shot. I arranged the supervisor, stayed up at the observatory all night, and set up the telescope at the required time. Except that the Moon wasn't there! I'd not realised that the time in the newspaper was for that morning's moonrise, not the following day. A whole sleepless night wasted for two of us!

That was a bit embarrassing, to say the least.

by **MarkBour** » Tue Sep 22, 2020 5:42 pm

Ann wrote: ↑Tue Sep 15, 2020 4:42 am
Fullpackad bokhylla.jpg

Ann

Roger Penrose! He would have something to say in this thread ... "it took him a few moments to realize that this could not possibly be the Sun"

The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe Roger Penrose, (C) 2004.

From the prologue ...

Am-tep was the King’s chief craftsman, an artist of consummate skills. It was night, and he lay sleeping on his workshop couch, tired after a handsomely productive evening’s work. But his sleep was restless – perhaps from an intangible tension that had seemed to be in the air. Indeed, he was not certain that he was asleep at all when it happened. Daytime had come – quite suddenly – when his bones told him that surely it must still be night.

He stood up abruptly. Something was odd. The dawn’s light could not be in the north; yet the red light shone alarmingly through his broad window that looked out northwards over the sea. He moved to the window and stared out, incredulous in amazement. The Sun had never before risen in the north! In his dazed state, it took him a few moments to realize that this could not possibly be the Sun. It was a distant shaft of a deep fiery red light that beamed vertically upwards from the water into the heavens.

by **Ann** » Thu Sep 17, 2020 5:17 am

MarkBour wrote: ↑Thu Sep 17, 2020 2:34 am
Ann wrote: ↑Tue Sep 15, 2020 4:04 am
MarkBour wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:30 pm Ann --

... After a little while, he realizes that any one of them would have been sufficient to ruin his life, so he wondered out loud why he ever thought he wanted more than one wife.
One wife would have been sufficient to ruin his life! Hmmm, why do I find that joke sexist?

Ann
You're quite right! When I wrote it, I remember thinking ... that's really chauvinistic, maybe I should just say "one wife was plenty." But then I decided I should be faithful to describe the story, and I think the clear narrative was that they were all wrecking his life. The story was indeed sexist, as was the entire series. This was an episode of either Dragon Ball or Dragon Ball Z, an anime series. Anyway, I was just saying the story reminded me of the one you referenced about a man who wanted multiple wives. Yours also reminds me a little of Ursula K LeGuin's Lathe of Heaven, but that's certainly not it.

Don't apologize! I appreciate you telling me the story as it was.

Oh, The Lathe of Heaven! That book was one of my favorites.

Well, that's how I remember it!

Ann

by **MarkBour** » Thu Sep 17, 2020 2:34 am

Ann wrote: ↑Tue Sep 15, 2020 4:04 am
MarkBour wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:30 pm Ann --

... After a little while, he realizes that any one of them would have been sufficient to ruin his life, so he wondered out loud why he ever thought he wanted more than one wife.
One wife would have been sufficient to ruin his life! Hmmm, why do I find that joke sexist?

Ann

You're quite right! When I wrote it, I remember thinking ... that's really chauvinistic, maybe I should just say "one wife was plenty." But then I decided I should be faithful to describe the story, and I think the clear narrative was that they were all wrecking his life. The story was indeed sexist, as was the entire series. This was an episode of either Dragon Ball or Dragon Ball Z, an anime series. Anyway, I was just saying the story reminded me of the one you referenced about a man who wanted multiple wives. Yours also reminds me a little of Ursula K LeGuin's Lathe of Heaven, but that's certainly not it.

by **Ann** » Wed Sep 16, 2020 5:24 am

johnnydeep wrote: ↑Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:13 pm

Ok, I'll keep looking. I did find Cracks In The Universe, by Karla Feldstein, but it came out in 2013, which I think is too recent for your recollection? Plus, although the plot is similar, it's not quite like your description. From the Amazon blurb:

Everything in Ariana's Wworld is cracking up... literally. Everwhere she looks there are cracks... in the walls, the buildings, the sidewalks, even the sky. While everyone else thinks that she's going crazy her ragtag team of friends stick by her side on a wild adventure to figure out what the cracks really are. However when fiction starts to bleed into reality, the trio realize that they need to fix it. How will the trio fix the cracks in the universe?
The plot sounds quite similar as far as it goes, but it is most certainly not the same book. Like you said, it's far too recent, because I had my sci-fi period mostly in the eighties, and some of it even in the seventies. And the name of the author definitely wasn't Karla, and the main character absolutely wasn't Ariana.

I think that the book might have been told in the first person, like "When I woke up this morning" and maybe even in the present tense, "There is something strange about the light this morning". But I'm not sure.

But I know that the main character, as well as the author, were definitely men.

Ann

by **johnnydeep** » Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:13 pm

Ann wrote: ↑Tue Sep 15, 2020 4:42 am
johnnydeep wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:33 pm
Ann wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2020 5:39 pm

Hmmm. I once read a sci-fi novel about a man finding himself in a universe that was coming apart at the seams, literally. Well, huge cracks were appearing everywhere. Scary. Eventually this guy finds out that he has tremendous mental powers, so that he can think the universe whole again. While he is at it, he marries two beautiful girls, because why not.

A sci-fi plot doesn't get much worse than that, if you ask me.

Ann
That sounds sort of interesting Can you think of the title or author? I did a quick search but came up empty. Another bad sci-fi plot is from the movie The Core: a group of people travel to the earth's core to try to restart it spinning again!

Fullpackad bokhylla.jpg
I'd like to help you, Johnny, but I might actually have thrown away the book because it offended me so much.

Usually I throw away nothing. The picture at right shows you one of my bookcases. One of them. You can't see the books I have crammed down behind the books you can actually see.

(You can tell that I collected books on tennis for a while - they are all from the seventies, when Björn Borg was at his prime. You can see that I had a Superman period and a Star Trek period and a bit of a Bradbury period. You can tell from the book with a bright green back that I studied economics at the university way back when. In the bottom shelf is Rare Earth by Peter Ward and Donald E. Brownlee, and a big fat book by Roger Penrose. There's also "Hästarnas dal", The Valley of Horses by Jean M. Auel, but I never read it. There are two relatively big Swedish-English and English-Swedish dictionaries which are gathering dust, because why use a printed dictionary when you can look things up on the web? There's the Bible that my grandparents gave me when I was ten, and yes, I did read all of it except the long lists of genealogy and Psalms. There's a big fat book on art, and there is... stuff.)

So no, I don't remember either the title of the book or the author, but I do remember that the book had kind of a catchy name. Maybe... Universe in Motion? No. The End of the Universe? No. Sorry, I can't help you. I might have thrown the book away, although I so rarely do that, or else (more likely) I have stuffed it away somewhere, and I can't find it.

By the way, as to that "Sunshine" movie and those astronauts whose job it was to re-ignite the Sun by setting off a fission bomb inside it... Yes, that does sound like one of the worst movie plots you could ever think of!!!

Ann

Ok, I'll keep looking. I did find Cracks In The Universe, by Karla Feldstein, but it came out in 2013, which I think is too recent for your recollection? Plus, although the plot is similar, it's not quite like your description. From the Amazon blurb:

Everything in Ariana's Wworld is cracking up... literally. Everwhere she looks there are cracks... in the walls, the buildings, the sidewalks, even the sky. While everyone else thinks that she's going crazy her ragtag team of friends stick by her side on a wild adventure to figure out what the cracks really are. However when fiction starts to bleed into reality, the trio realize that they need to fix it. How will the trio fix the cracks in the universe?

by **Ann** » Tue Sep 15, 2020 4:42 am

johnnydeep wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:33 pm
Ann wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2020 5:39 pm
MarkBour wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2020 5:07 pm

Capture.png
If only such a thing would qualify for my top 10 worst mistakes,
I'd be in pretty good shape! Just to be lost in thought for a
moment about the possibility of a weakened Sun.

Hey, after all, it was the right size, and in a sense, it was sunshine.

At least you didn't go on to write the Sci Fi movie Sunshine, right?

That was one of the worst plots I've run across.
Hmmm. I once read a sci-fi novel about a man finding himself in a universe that was coming apart at the seams, literally. Well, huge cracks were appearing everywhere. Scary. Eventually this guy finds out that he has tremendous mental powers, so that he can think the universe whole again. While he is at it, he marries two beautiful girls, because why not.

A sci-fi plot doesn't get much worse than that, if you ask me.

Ann
That sounds sort of interesting Can you think of the title or author? I did a quick search but came up empty. Another bad sci-fi plot is from the movie The Core: a group of people travel to the earth's core to try to restart it spinning again!

I'd like to help you, Johnny, but I might actually have thrown away the book because it offended me so much.

Usually I throw away nothing. The picture at right shows you one of my bookcases. One of them. You can't see the books I have crammed down behind the books you can actually see.

(You can tell that I collected books on tennis for a while - they are all from the seventies, when Björn Borg was at his prime. You can see that I had a Superman period and a Star Trek period and a bit of a Bradbury period. You can tell from the book with a bright green back that I studied economics at the university way back when. In the bottom shelf is Rare Earth by Peter Ward and Donald E. Brownlee, and a big fat book by Roger Penrose. There's also "Hästarnas dal", The Valley of Horses by Jean M. Auel, but I never read it. There are two relatively big Swedish-English and English-Swedish dictionaries which are gathering dust, because why use a printed dictionary when you can look things up on the web? There's the Bible that my grandparents gave me when I was ten, and yes, I did read all of it except the long lists of genealogy and Psalms. There's a big fat book on art, and there is... stuff.)

So no, I don't remember either the title of the book or the author, but I do remember that the book had kind of a catchy name. Maybe... Universe in Motion? No. The End of the Universe? No. Sorry, I can't help you. I might have thrown the book away, although I so rarely do that, or else (more likely) I have stuffed it away somewhere, and I can't find it.

By the way, as to that "Sunshine" movie and those astronauts whose job it was to re-ignite the Sun by setting off a fission bomb inside it... Yes, that does sound like one of the worst movie plots you could ever think of!!!

Ann

by **Ann** » Tue Sep 15, 2020 4:04 am

MarkBour wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:30 pm Ann --

LOL. Yes, why not? You're reminding me of a supposedly-children's anime. In one episode a powerful ruler marries several women, because he can. After a little while, he realizes that any one of them would have been sufficient to ruin his life, so he wondered out loud why he ever thought he wanted more than one wife.

By the way, you prompted me to pick up an interesting fact from space.com, one that you probably know:

https://www.space.com/11162-10-surprisi ... moons.html
The ratio of brightness of the sun versus the moon: 398,110 to 1.

One wife would have been sufficient to ruin his life! Hmmm, why do I find that joke sexist?

Thanks for telling me the ratio of brightness of the Sun versus the Moon!

I had never checked it myself. But that's why I wanted to sneak under my seat out of embarrassment when I realized that I had mistaken the Moon for the Sun.

Ann

by **alter-ego** » Tue Sep 15, 2020 3:52 am

David Cooper wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2020 6:17 am Man in the Moon: I have always wondered what people meant by the Man in the Moon and Today's APOD has given me the best impression for the Man in the Moon yet. I See a portrait of a man looking to the left with the eye just above the center of the moon with the two dark maria above for the heir.

You know this Covid thing has changed my perspective on many things. My very first impression of this image was the "Man" right above the mountain was wearing his face mask improperly. Pretty sad I'd say.

by **johnnydeep** » Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:33 pm

Ann wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2020 5:39 pm
MarkBour wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2020 5:07 pm
Ann wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:11 am Today's APOD reminds me of the most embarrassing, stupid mistake I ever made. ...
Ann

Capture.png
If only such a thing would qualify for my top 10 worst mistakes,
I'd be in pretty good shape! Just to be lost in thought for a
moment about the possibility of a weakened Sun.

Hey, after all, it was the right size, and in a sense, it was sunshine.

At least you didn't go on to write the Sci Fi movie Sunshine, right?

That was one of the worst plots I've run across.
Hmmm. I once read a sci-fi novel about a man finding himself in a universe that was coming apart at the seams, literally. Well, huge cracks were appearing everywhere. Scary. Eventually this guy finds out that he has tremendous mental powers, so that he can think the universe whole again. While he is at it, he marries two beautiful girls, because why not.

A sci-fi plot doesn't get much worse than that, if you ask me.

Ann

That sounds sort of interesting

Can you think of the title or author? I did a quick search but came up empty. Another bad sci-fi plot is from the movie The Core: a group of people travel to the earth's core to try to restart it spinning again!

PS - Malmö seems like a nice place, even the climate is pretty mild. I figured it would be too cold and snowy, but it's on the southern tip of Sweden near the ocean, so that moderates it. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malmö#Climate:

Malmö, like the rest of southern Sweden, has an oceanic climate. Despite its northern location, the climate is mild compared to other locations at similar latitudes, mainly because of the influence of the Gulf Stream and also its westerly position on the Eurasian landmass. Owing to its northern latitude, daylight lasts 17 hours in midsummer, but only around seven hours in midwinter. According to data from 2002–2014 Falsterbo, to the south of the city, received an annual average of 1,895 hours of sunshine while Lund, to the north, received 1,803 hours. The sunshine data in the weather box is based on the data for Falsterbo.[18]

Summers are mild with average high temperatures of 20 to 23 °C (68 to 73 °F) and lows of around 11 to 13 °C (52 to 55 °F). Heat waves during the summer arise occasionally. Winters are fairly cold and windy, with temperatures steady between −3 to 4 °C (27 to 39 °F), but it rarely drops below −10 °C (14 °F).

Rainfall is light to moderate throughout the year with 169 wet days. Snowfall occurs mainly in December through March, but snow covers do not remain for a long time,[19] and some winters are virtually free of snow.

by **MarkBour** » Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:30 pm

Ann --

LOL. Yes, why not? You're reminding me of a supposedly-children's anime. In one episode a powerful ruler marries several women, because he can. After a little while, he realizes that any one of them would have been sufficient to ruin his life, so he wondered out loud why he ever thought he wanted more than one wife.

By the way, you prompted me to pick up an interesting fact from space.com, one that you probably know:

https://www.space.com/11162-10-surprisi ... moons.html
The ratio of brightness of the sun versus the moon: 398,110 to 1.

by **Ann** » Mon Sep 14, 2020 5:39 pm

MarkBour wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2020 5:07 pm
Ann wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:11 am Today's APOD reminds me of the most embarrassing, stupid mistake I ever made. ...
Ann

Capture.png
If only such a thing would qualify for my top 10 worst mistakes,
I'd be in pretty good shape! Just to be lost in thought for a
moment about the possibility of a weakened Sun.

Hey, after all, it was the right size, and in a sense, it was sunshine.

At least you didn't go on to write the Sci Fi movie Sunshine, right?

That was one of the worst plots I've run across.

Hmmm. I once read a sci-fi novel about a man finding himself in a universe that was coming apart at the seams, literally. Well, huge cracks were appearing everywhere. Scary. Eventually this guy finds out that he has tremendous mental powers, so that he can think the universe whole again. While he is at it, he marries two beautiful girls, because why not.

A sci-fi plot doesn't get much worse than that, if you ask me.

Ann

by **MarkBour** » Mon Sep 14, 2020 5:25 pm

APOD Robot wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2020 4:09 am ... A rising Full Corn Moon was captured early this month in time-lapse with a telephoto lens from nearly 30 kilometers away ...

Okay, what?

Also, I've noticed that APOD captions will add the adjective "Full" in these references, such as "Full Corn Moon" above. But it doesn't sound right to my ears. These named events (Harvest Moon, Hunter's Moon, Corn Moon) are all understood to be full moons. I suppose our APOD authors, in their role as educators, are just being hyper-careful about it. Carefully careful, that is.

by **MarkBour** » Mon Sep 14, 2020 5:07 pm

Ann wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:11 am Today's APOD reminds me of the most embarrassing, stupid mistake I ever made. ...
Ann

If only such a thing would qualify for my top 10 worst mistakes,
I'd be in pretty good shape! Just to be lost in thought for a
moment about the possibility of a weakened Sun.

Hey, after all, it was the right size, and in a sense, it was sunshine.

At least you didn't go on to write the Sci Fi movie Sunshine, right?

That was one of the worst plots I've run across.

by **Mark B** » Mon Sep 14, 2020 11:44 am

Beautiful picture, but that moon looks like it's a lot more than 30km away!

by **neufer** » Mon Sep 14, 2020 11:29 am

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

by **Ann** » Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:11 am

: Aboard a bus in Malmö. Photo: Mikael Anjou.

Today's APOD reminds me of the most embarrassing, stupid mistake I ever made.

It happened many years ago. I was on a bus in Malmö, and I was going home.

It was getting dark. Next to me was a teenage couple, a boy and a girl.

For myself, I was lost in thoughts, which is not unusual.

The skyline in Malmö is certainly nothing like the skyline in the picture at right, but I'm posting the picture anyway because it gives you an idea of the skyscape that night.

Anyway. I was on that bus, lost in thoughts. There were these teenagers next to me. And suddenly the girl pointed to the yellow light in the darkening sky, and said to her boyfriend,

"Look at the Sun."

And I looked. And the world was turned upside down, because I could see that something unspeakable had happened to the Sun, to make it shine so wanly. I felt myself transported into realms of science fiction, and I wondered, almost dreamily, how humanity would survive now that the Sun had mostly gone out...

"It's the Moon", said the boy.

And I woke up. Yup, that's the Moon. I looked around me carefully, to see if anyone had caught me mistaking the Moon for the Sun. Nope, no one paid any attention.

I put on my best cool expression for the rest of my bus ride home.🥴

Ann

by **XgeoX** » Mon Sep 14, 2020 7:01 am

David Cooper wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2020 6:17 am Man in the Moon: I have always wondered what people meant by the Man in the Moon and Today's APOD has given me the best impression for the Man in the Moon yet. I See a portrait of a man looking to the left with the eye just above the center of the moon with the two dark maria above for the heir.

In Asia it’s the rabbit in the moon!

Yeah I don’t get it either...

Eric

by **David Cooper** » Mon Sep 14, 2020 6:17 am

Man in the Moon: I have always wondered what people meant by the Man in the Moon and Today's APOD has given me the best impression for the Man in the Moon yet. I See a portrait of a man looking to the left with the eye just above the center of the moon with the two dark maria above for the heir.

by **orin stepanek** » Mon Sep 14, 2020 4:32 am

wanting a golden harvest!

by **APOD Robot** » Mon Sep 14, 2020 4:09 am

Corn Moon Rising

Explanation: A rising moon can be a dramatic sight. A rising Full Corn Moon was captured early this month in time-lapse with a telephoto lens from nearly 30 kilometers away -- making Earth's ascending half-degree companion appear unusually impressive. The image was captured from Portugal, although much of the foreground -- including lights from the village of Puebla de GuzmÃ¡n -- is in Spain. A Full Corn Moon is the name attributed to a full moon at this time of year by cultures of some northern indigenous peoples of the Americas, as it coincides with the ripening of corn. Note that the Moon does not appear larger when it is nearer the horizon -- its seemingly larger size there is only an illusion. The next full moon -- occurring at the beginning of next month -- will be known as the Full Harvest Moon as it occurs nearest in time to the northern autumnal equinox and the northern field harvests.

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