…in the late ’80s I was in Disneyland. We always try to eat dinner at the “Blue Bayou” restaurant (the only quasi-nice place in the park). For those of you who have never been there, it is set up like the back veranda of a southern mansion in the antebellum south and you are having a late evening dinner. The illusion is pretty complete with the heat and humidity higher than normal for indoors, frog and cricket sound effects, and fireflies (artificial, of course) flitting about in the bushes separating you from the river where folks just starting the “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride drift by.

To complete the illusion, there is a setting crescent moon on the horizon, about four or five days old. There was something subconsciously bothering me about this all through dinner until I realized that the wrong face of the moon was lit. The horns of the crescent were pointing to the horizon rather than away from it. To my wife’s supreme embarrassment, I pointed this out to our waitress (after 25 years these “nerd moments” still bother her). However, the next time we were at the park, about 5 years later, I noticed that the moon had been fixed! It was now a waxing gibbous, maybe 10 days old, and the correct face was lit up. Of course, with that phase just setting, that means we were eating dinner at about 4 AM, but, to my wife’s infinite relief, I let this little subtlety slide.

- Jack

I love seeing the moon get thinner and thinner. And seeing it after it has passed the new moon phase is also a fave of mine. I’m often in awe of the site of the crescent moon with the sun “below” it at sunset.

This just missed the old record by 12 minutes which was, oddly enough, set just
12 minutes earlier by Robert Victor in Lansing, Michigan.

This blew past the previous record by an hour or so, back in May of 1989.

(btw I live just a stone’s throw from the place that inspired Tolkien in the first place, so maybe I’m descended from a Hobbit…)

Well, it was intended to be, but an Earth before we spoilt it. This is why all the flora and most of the fauna are things familiar to us. He first invented Middle-Earth because he was trying to restore a mythology (for which read oral tradition) to England that had been lost as a result of the Norman conquest in 1066. The Normans actively suppressed the Anglo-Saxon language, and required all official documents to be in Norman French.

Tolkien’s earliest stories eventually became The Silmarillion, after passing through many incarnations. LOTR was initially conceived as a sequel to The Hobbit in the same kind of vein, but it grew in the telling to something quite different. It contains many references to events described in The Silmarillion and is set in the same world. Which is England, but told via a postulated mythic tradition.

Well, he may have made it once, but if so it was one that slipped through the net. In fact, he spent weeks trying to get the different story threads to match up in terms of timing, particularly with respect to the phases of the moon.

Only by a short time, my friend. I can’t post here from work, so I had to wait until the evening – otherwise you wouldn’t have been the first to catch it.

But isn’t the picture here of a very old Moon. Boy, can’t believe I am the first to catch that

Rob

http://www.digitalsky.org.uk/20050607/youngmoon.html

The thin Moon on LPOD was the last in a sequence of daylight shots I was taking as an experiment with the SKYnyx camera. The ability to adjust the contrast and brightness with a live histogram is really helpful in bringing out the Moon against a bright sky. The other shots take prior to this one can be seen here…

http://www.digitalsky.org.uk/l2006/lunarphases_july_2006-fullsize.jpg

Thanks for all your comments,

Pete Lawrence

I have often had to point out to people that the famous footage (taken, I think by the Apollo 12 astronauts) does *not* show a real “Earthrise”, as the Lunar Module was flying across the surface of the Moon at the time it was taken (please correct me if I’m wrong about this, but I’m pretty sure I’m right.) Thus I have always maintained that the Earth does not move in the Moon’s “sky”, but merely goes through phases.

However, Using the brilliant Celestia program I discovered that if you could stand on the edge of the Moon (as seen from Earth) you would actually see an Earthrise once a month, due to the fact that the Moon wobbles slightly in its orbit. In fact by selecting the spot very carefully and speeding up the program you will see the Earth rise up from the horizon just enough for the Sun to pass underneath before the Earth circles back down again in what almost appears to be a kind of celestial choreography. Celestia shows that it does move, albeit only slightly, making a tiny circle once per Lunar month. This is just enough to produce a spectacular Earthrise providing you stand at just the right spot. Something to remember if you ever find yourself wandering around the Lunar surface with nothing to do!

An amateur with a spaceship, perhaps?

Wow! That’s amazing. Thanks for pointing it out.

it was about 12oz / pound

pass the crackers there Gromit

Also, check this out this image:
http://www.lpod.org/?m=20060722
That was taken by an “amateur”!

Thanks for the link, that’s a beautoful picture.