johnnydeep wrote: ↑Wed Dec 01, 2021 3:36 pm
Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Wed Dec 01, 2021 2:07 pm
JohnD wrote: ↑Wed Dec 01, 2021 12:34 pm
Oh, for goodness sake! May we - and this
astronomy website - please stop using terms such as "Blood Moon".
As shown, APoD is perfectly capable of describing the colours of an eclipsed Moon, without pandering to zombie and vampire fantasists.
Nice pic, by the way!
John
I like the term. Nothing wrong with it. Our language and our culture are richer for such terms. And such terms also serve to make astronomical ideas more accessible to more people.
Right. Science is, after all, embedded in cultures and societies and the two cross pollinate each other's terms and language. Without such, science would be devoid of poetry, which would be a terrible shame.
But, johnny.....
There is no blood on the moon. If you wish to be poetic, the colour of an eclipse is the colour of sunsets, of very early mornings. The poets have said so!
A sloop of amber slips away
Upon an ether sea,
And wrecks in peace a purple tar,
The son of ecstasy. Emily Dickinson, Sunset. That namechecks combinations of red and blue!
And her:
How the old mountains drip with sunset,
And the brake of dun!
How the hemlocks are tipped in tinsel
By the wizard sun! ED The coming of night. She might be describing a lunar sunset (she wasn't)
OR, Robert Frost (I am choosing American Poets, purposely)
The west was getting out of gold,
The breath of air had died of cold,
When shoeing home across the white,
I thought I saw a bird alight.
A brush had left a crooked stroke
Of what was either cloud or smoke
From north to south across the blue;
A piercing little star was through. Looking for a Sunset Bird in Winter.
But I have to admit that the Poet of Poets used a bloody moon as a portent of ill times:
The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth,
And lean-looked prophets whisper fearful change. Richard II, Act 2, Scene 4
Certainly the allusion was used much earler than by some recent TV station, or modern apocalypts!
John