Starship Asterisk*

geckzilla wrote:Man, after all this time, I've never seen so-called man on the moon. Somehow tonight it kicked in and I think I might see it. Is the face looking slightly to its right?

It wasn't until I read the book this YouTube video covers to my then small son that I saw the man on the moon, so you're not alone in not having seen it! When I was young, I saw was a young woman with long hair seated at a vanity (the furniture-in-a-bedroom thing) looking into its mirror and styling her hair.

At 11 pm EST, i saw a meteor out to my west that was a very light blue. Ann would have loved it!

Beyond wrote:At 11 pm EST, i saw a meteor out to my west that was a very light blue. Ann would have loved it!

I'm BLUE with envy!!!

Ann

The new Moon, less than two days old, just set behind the ridge on my south-west horizon, about a kilometre distant. With my unaided eyes, I could see only a dull, formless glow through the thickening clouds and dripping humidity. But this six second exposure at ISO 1600, revealed the crescent with a touch of Earthshine. (A large possum also chose this moment to inadvertently wander up next to me and we gave each other a fright in the darkness.)

That's very pretty, Nit. I miss the silhouette of eucalyptus trees which were so common in SoCal.

And the possum is the one Australian animal that is super cute in stark contrast to its American relative. Ours are kind of gnarly.

geckzilla wrote:That's very pretty, Nit. I miss the silhouette of eucalyptus trees which were so common in SoCal.

And the possum is the one Australian animal that is super cute in stark contrast to its American relative. Ours are kind of gnarly.

But I like your squirrels. They used to entertain me for hours in my Colorado backyard. Also the urbane squirrels in Central Park in NYC.

Haha, I never get tired of them, either. They engage in amusing open quarrels with one another and catching an acrobatic act is always a pleasure. I had no idea there were no (native) squirrels in Australia. They seem ubiquitous like a mosquito or a dog.

Nitpicker wrote:The new Moon, less than two days old, just set behind the ridge on my south-west horizon, about a kilometre distant. With my unaided eyes, I could see only a dull, formless glow through the thickening clouds and dripping humidity. But this six second exposure at ISO 1600, revealed the crescent with a touch of Earthshine.

Moon_20141124_1917+10.jpg

(A large possum also chose this moment to inadvertently wander up next to me and we gave each other a fright in the darkness.)

I saw that Moon, minus the golden halo, too. And this morning I saw stars - Orion et al, the Pleiades, the Big Dipper and others.

It was the first time I've seen stars for at least a month!

Ann

Caught the Moon right at first quarter the other night, in average seeing conditions. Lurking in the shadows of the terminator, you can see the "Lunar V" in the north and "Lunar X" in the south.

That's a nice shot, Nitpicker.

There is an article on-line in Sky and Telescope called "Shadows on the Moon Make a Point".

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observin ... ake-point/

They discuss the phenomena of rounded mountains making pointy shadows. But I can't see where the reasons are illuminated. Any ideas?

It is a nice image of the moon!

Ron-Astro Pharmacist wrote:They discuss the phenomena of rounded mountains making pointy shadows. But I can't see where the reasons are illuminated. Any ideas?

The width of a shadow doesn't change with the illumination angle, but the length does. Indeed, the length changes as the tangent of the angle, meaning the shadows are infinitely long at a 90° illumination angle!

Rounded mountains don't actually make pointy shadows. They make very long shadows compared with their width, however, which we might tend to describe as "pointy". But a point implies some sort of discontinuity, and that won't present itself in a shadow unless it is also present on the body casting the shadow.

I liked the "Available" part of this photo from the other day. I need a good photo image inhancing program and tutorial.

It is likely due to the same phenom that makes the earths shadow a cone in space about 850,000 miles long.
Shadows, even from round surfaces will reach a Cone Point in space where the Tangent angles converge

Chris Peterson wrote:

Ron-Astro Pharmacist wrote:They discuss the phenomena of rounded mountains making pointy shadows. But I can't see where the reasons are illuminated. Any ideas?

The width of a shadow doesn't change with the illumination angle, but the length does. Indeed, the length changes as the tangent of the angle, meaning the shadows are infinitely long at a 90° illumination angle!

Rounded mountains don't actually make pointy shadows. They make very long shadows compared with their width, however, which we might tend to describe as "pointy". But a point implies some sort of discontinuity, and that won't present itself in a shadow unless it is also present on the body casting the shadow.

Thank you both - I was not even in the right ball park with my thoughts.

Coming late to the party, I must chime in and say that I really enjoy your Moon picture, Nit. I especially like the contrast between the flat smooth lava plains and the seemingly rather flat illuminated bright parts at the upper left on the one hand, and the starkly craggy crater-ridden landscape around the terminator on the other hand. I can definitely see the Moon "X", and I think I can see the "V", too. There are a few cracks(?), which may have been described as dried-out riverbeds if they had appeared on Mars. As a color commentator, I like the fact that I can see that the lava plain to the lower left is slightly redder in color than the lava plain to the upper right of it.

This is your second fine Moon picture on this page of this thread, so thank you!

Ann

Ann wrote:Coming late to the party, I must chime in and say that I really enjoy your Moon picture, Nit. I especially like the contrast between the flat smooth lava plains and the seemingly rather flat illuminated bright parts at the upper left on the one hand, and the starkly craggy crater-ridden landscape around the terminator on the other hand. I can definitely see the Moon "X", and I think I can see the "V", too. There are a few cracks(?), which may have been described as dried-out riverbeds if they had appeared on Mars. As a color commentator, I like the fact that I can see that the lava plain to the lower left is slightly redder in color than the lava plain to the upper right of it.

This is your second fine Moon picture on this page of this thread, so thank you!

Ann

Thanks Ann, et al.

The south-east of the near-side (image right) is more heavily cratered than the north-east (image left). But the Moon only looks more cratered near the terminator, because the Sun illuminates at increasingly lower angles as you approach the terminator. For hobbyists like me photographing the Moon, the terminator is where it's at!

As for the colour, the Moon gives away very little colour information. I could have set my DSLR to monochrome mode and the image wouldn't have been terribly different (you'd still see a difference in shade between the maria Serenitatis and Tranquillitatis). As it is, shown in colour, it has almost a sepia tone to it, which I like on an aesthetic level, but which I think is actually more indicative of the light pollution in Brisbane, than anything on the Moon.

The things that look like cracks could be rilles or rimae (grooves), dorsa (ridges), or rays of brighter ejecta from crater impacts. I'm still a little unsure of the difference between a rille and a rima and even less sure of their origins. Something geological, I expect.

I managed a higher resolution of the terminator in this mosaic from the same session (reduced by half for upload and to hide the worst of the somewhat careless processing), manually stitched together late at night, when I should have been sleeping:

Thanks, Nit, what a bonanza of lunar craters lurking at the terminator!

Please note that the color difference between the two adjacent lava plains is real, although incredibly subtle. Here is a color-enhanced picture of the Moon.

Ann

Ann wrote:Thanks, Nit, what a bonanza of lunar craters lurking at the terminator!

Please note that the color difference between the two adjacent lava plains is real, although incredibly subtle. Here is a color-enhanced picture of the Moon.

Ann

Oh, I know, but my point was that there is probably more colour information coming from the atmosphere above my back yard, than from the Moon. In the colour-saturated version, the difference in the maria is red vs blue, whereas in my image it is slightly red vs slightly redder.

Nitpicker wrote:

Ann wrote:Thanks, Nit, what a bonanza of lunar craters lurking at the terminator!

Please note that the color difference between the two adjacent lava plains is real, although incredibly subtle. Here is a color-enhanced picture of the Moon.

Ann

Oh, I know, but my point was that there is probably more colour information coming from the atmosphere above my back yard, than from the Moon. In the colour-saturated version, the difference in the maria is red vs blue, whereas in my image it is slightly red vs slightly redder.

As a self-proclaimed expert on the color blue, here is my verdict: There is no such thing as a truly blue patch of land on the Moon!

So your picture tells us the truth: The lunar palette varies from slightly red pieces of land to slightly redder patches of lunar real estate.

Ann

Last night and tonight, Geminid meteors, easily seen even in my light-infested neighborhood. As in, I grabbed a cookie, went outside, and before I was done eating the cookie, saw three meteors. I stood in my socks, no coat, and looked up until after my neck started hurting and saw more than a dozen meteors last night before coming in; they were quite bright. Tonight, I was letting little cat in the patio door, so stepped outside for about 90 seconds and saw two meteors. Also Orion hanging over my house, and a very pretty moon in the east.

I see a bright banana stuck to the side of an orb. It's always nice when it does that.

Beyond wrote:I see a bright banana stuck to the side of an orb. It's always nice when it does that.

Way too much eggnog!

Rob

Nope!

Just saw a most unusual pair of meteors out to my west. The color was like two illuminated diamonds traveling very close together. I didn't catch when it started, so i don't know if it split upon initial contact with the atmosphere, or if they were separate before they hit the atmosphere. Never seen anything like that before.