The Beauty of the Full Moon

That's right. Just when you thought I might shut up about astronomy and the Moon, you're wrong!



The Moon is the only satellite we've got. Jupiter has 63 known satellites. Saturn is up to ummm... 54 moons? Hold on... No, 62. Damn... just one less than Jupiter and it has those gorgeous rings. Now, that is saying something! But if you lived there, which would be no small feat, most of those moons would be invisible. Actually, all of them would be, since the atmosphere is not clear like Terra or Mars. Here, we just have this big silvery Moon that fills the sky with her brilliance and is 400 times smaller than the Sun but allows for solar eclipses - because it is a distance of 400 times closer to us. The weird little coincedences that give us the magic of the solar elcipse... that is never more than seven minutes of totality and always happens in some gods-forsaken place that is nowhere near northern New Jersey. The closest I can expect to see this happen is Christian County, Kentucky on 21 August 2017. This means hiking my cookies to Kentucky to see an event that will be 2 minutes 14 seconds long and absolutely needs to be sunny outside.



I'm betting I don't want to be in Kentucky in August for any reason. But it is this or wait until 14 October 2023, when I am 55 years old and it shoots across the southwestern United States. Actually, that sounds a lot more appealing than Kentucky in August - any August. I love all months and I do enjoy summer, but that far south in the brutally hottest month seems like a bad idea no matter what.
In case you are wondering, I took that image last night. Pretty cool, isn't it? Can't do that on Saturn!

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