The Moon By Night

This is Wikipedia's image of the moon.

I think man has been completely beguiled and besotted by the Moon since he first looked up to the full moon and thought about what he was seeing. I feel that way every time I look at the moon in all of its phases - full, half, crescent, visible in the day or the night. I love it when it is a largesickle hanging low in the sky in the crepescular light of dawn.

The sun shall not smite thee by day,

Nor the moon by night

It is with those amazing words that I look upon the Moon as my friend. Astronomy makes some people feel insignificant, but astronomy is the celestial dance to which we all belong, just as we are a part of the Earth, the Earth is a part of the solar system and the solar system is a part of our galaxy, the Milky Way. We are all fitted together. An insect has his role in the universe just as Jupiter has its role.

This image is also mine, taken as the Moon went more into the Umbral shadow of the moon.

I got up with my alarm at 0420 and there was the moon, just 25 minutes into the penumbral shadow of the earth. There is nothing quite like a full (umbral) lunar eclipse. The moon gets slowly overshadowed until it goes into the umbra, and once in totality, it can turn orange, blood red or in rare cases, grey. Then just like the moment is over and a sliver of bright light comes as the shadow of the earth continues on its path.

As I drove into work, there were some minor clouds but the slowly occluded moon was visible, delightfully so. By the time I got to work, it was too low on the horizon to see it - but the western sky is not well viewed from the golf course. I drove a cart in the semi-darkness to the Grounds Admin building where I met up with John Hyland. (John looks just like Wilford Brimley - and he sounds just like him, too. I really like John and he and I both appreciate nature greatly.) He hopped in the cart with me and took me to the best vantage point to see the setting eclipsing moon. Unfortunately by then it was too cloudy to see all but the bottom of the very ruddy crescent, and it set into the tree line before reaching totality. But it was nice to see what I did and I loved having John to share the experience with me.

Well, John gave me directions up to the fourth Upper course tee, to see the sun rise. Oh, oh, my gods. I want to buy John a gift. The photos I took... it magical, amazing, an awesome sight and I have images galore of it. I will post those tomorrow. I can feel the muscle relaxants working on me now, so it is soon bedtime.

This is my image of the moon taken on 27 October 2004 during the last total eclipse until March 2007 (which was also occluded by clouds). I held my camera up to the eye piece of my telescope to get this shot.

Here is what Wikipedia has to say:

The Moon (Latin: Luna) is Earth's only permanent natural satellite. It is the fifth largest moon in the Solar System. The average centre-to-centre distance from the Earth to the Moon is 384,403 kilometres (238,857 miles), which is about 30 times the diameter of the Earth. The Moon has a diameter of 3,474 kilometres (2,159 miles)[1]—slightly more than a quarter that of the Earth. This means that the volume of the Moon is close to 1/50th that of Earth. The gravitational pull at its surface is about 1/6th of Earth's. The Moon makes a complete orbit around the Earth every 27.3 days, and the periodic variations in the geometry of the Earth–Moon–Sun system are responsible for the lunar phases that repeat every 29.5 days.

The gravitational, centripetal forces generated by the rotation of the Moon and Earth around a common axis, the barycentre, are largely responsible for the tides on Earth. The energy dissipated in generating tides is directly responsible for the reduction in potential energy in the Moon-Earth orbit around the barycentre, resulting in a 3.8 cm yearly increase in the distance between the two bodies.[2] The Moon will continue to move slowly away from the Earth until the tidal effects between the two are no longer of significance, whereupon the Moon's orbit will stabilise.

The Moon is the only celestial body to which humans have travelled and upon which humans have landed. The first artificial object to escape Earth's gravity and pass near the Moon was the Soviet Union's Luna 1, the first artificial object to impact the lunar surface was Luna 2, and the first photographs of the normally occluded far side of the Moon were made by Luna 3, all in 1959. The first spacecraft to perform a successful lunar soft landing was Luna 9, and the first unmanned vehicle to orbit the Moon was Luna 10, both in 1966.[1] The U.S. Apollo program achieved the only manned missions to date, resulting in six landings between 1969 and 1972. Human exploration of the Moon ceased with the conclusion of the Apollo program, although, as of 2007, several countries have announced plans to send either people or robotic spacecraft to the Moon.