Starship Asterisk*

Chris Peterson wrote:
I guess any astronomical event that gets people looking at or photographing the sky is a good thing. But this whole "supermoon" thing is pretty lame (I'm not sure who came up with the idea). Visually, this Moon is about the same size as a handful of full Moons each year. And photographically, it is a non-event, since in an image there's absolutely nothing that distinguishes the angular size of the Moon. The only way to make this photographically significant would be to capture the Moon a couple of times during the year, with the same foreground.

(I'm not complaining about this image, just a little disappointed to see APOD jumping onto what I thought was a pretty silly bandwagon, largely treated in the popular press as some sort of rare and stunning phenomenon... when it was neither.)

January	Wolf Moon
February  Snow Moon
March	  Worm Moon
April	  Pink Moon
May	    Flower Moon
June	   Strawberry Moon
July	   Buck Moon
August	 Sturgeon Moon
September Harvest Moon
October	Hunter's Moon
November  Beaver Moon
December  Cold Moon

• . http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100101.html
  . http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap070607.html
  . http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap040731.html
  . http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap990129.html

owlice wrote:
My ride to the subway this morning (the "not able to drive" thing is terribly old now ) told me he'd gone out to try to see the supermoon (couldn't; too cloudy), this someone who doesn't have any particular interest in astronomy; he even remembered the date of last year's supermoon, which he did see. Hurrah for the popular press -- and not just the popular press, but astronomy sites, too -- telling people (once again) that the moon looks bigger right now!

JohnD wrote:
Science should use truth, not lies, to enthuse its audience.

_______ The Doodle

Elaine: Did you read the whole thing?

Kramer: Oh! yeah.

Elaine: So What's it about?

Kramer: Well it's a story about love, deception, greed, lust and...unbridled enthusiasm.

Elaine: unbridled enthusiasm...?

Kramer: Well , that's what led to Billy Mumphrey's downfall.

Elaine: Oh! boy.

Kramer: You see Elaine, Billy was a simple country boy. You might say a cockeyed optimist,
. who got himself mixed up in the high stakes game of world diplomacy and international intrigue.

Elaine: Oh! my God.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enthusiasm wrote:
<<Enthusiasm originally meant inspiration or possession by a divine afflatus or by the presence of a god. Johnson's Dictionary, the first comprehensive dictionary of the English language, defines enthusiasm as "a vain belief of private REVElation; a vain confidence of divine favour or communication." An enthusiast was a person possessed by a god. Applied by the Greeks to manifestations of divine possession, by Apollo (as in the case of the Pythia), or by Dionysus (as in the case of the Bacchantes and Maenads), the term enthusiasm was also used in a transferred or figurative sense. Socrates taught that the inspiration of poets is a form of enthusiasm.

Its uses were confined to a belief in religious inspiration, or to intense religious fervour or emotion. Thus, a Syrian sect of the 4th century was known as the Enthusiasts. They believed that "by perpetual prayer, ascetic practices and contemplation, man could become inspired by the Holy Spirit, in spite of the ruling evil spirit, which the fall had given to him". From their belief in the efficacy of prayer, they were also known as Euchites. Several Protestant sects of the 16th and 17th centuries were called enthusiastic. During the years that immediately followed the Glorious Revolution, "enthusiasm" was a British pejorative term for advocacy of any political or religious cause in public. Such "enthusiasm" was seen in the time around 1700 as the cause of the previous century's English Civil War and its attendant atrocities, and thus it was an absolute social sin to remind others of the war by engaging in enthusiasm. The Royal Society bylaws stipulated that any person discussing religion or politics at a Society meeting was to be summarily ejected for being an "enthusiast." During the 18th century, popular Methodists such as John Wesley or George Whitefield were accused of blind enthusiasm (i.e. fanaticism), a charge against which they defended themselves by distinguishing fanaticism from "religion of the heart.">>

iann wrote:Chris, although I agree with the sentiment you express, your calculations are not quite correct.

Chris Peterson wrote:

iann wrote:Chris, although I agree with the sentiment you express, your calculations are not quite correct.

I didn't show any calculations...

morrisroos wrote:The photo you chose for the day is very poor technically: the Eifel Tower is not in focus, nor is the moon. As a photographic example of the supermoon, this was a very poor choice.