How is it that the moon ended up between the sapcecraft and the sun? Isn’t it within the same orbit as earth but 290 million miles away? Since the moon’s orbit is only ~250k miles, how did it end up in the middle? Or is STEREO in a wider orbit but in the same general region as Earth? I think I need a diagram showing their position…

humans are a spacefaring species

If you count low Earth orbit as ‘Space’ then yeah I suppose so, the same way swimmers and surfers might be said to be ocean faring.

I think that what Phil is saying here is that we are a spacefaring species in every possible sense of the word. It’s just that our “ship” happens to be the size of a planet.

I think that for a lot of people Earth and “space” are separate. We are here on Earth and space is “out there”. I suspect that many folk — excluding those here, of course — don’t regularly think of the Earth as just another body moving through space. Heck, it’s not something I think about all that often. And videos like this are a great reminder.

Perhaps there is some problem with discovermagazine.com, either way I though you should know.

Regards

Hector

Thanks for sharing, Phil.

You nailed that one right on the head.

If you count low Earth orbit as ‘Space’ then yeah I suppose so, the same way swimmers and surfers might be said to be ocean faring.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/08/19/the-moon-is-shrinking/

&

http://discovermagazine.com/2011/jan-feb/28/?searchterm=shrinking Moon

& on it shrinking and growing in phase and caught on camera :

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/08/26/does-this-perigee-make-my-moon-look-fat/

***

“The triple triumph of the Moon, then, is that it made it possible for man [sic] to exist; it made it possible for him [sic] to develop mathematics and science, it made it possible for him [sic] to transcend Earth and conquer space.”
- Page 38, ‘The Tragedy of the Moon’, Isaac Asimov, Mercury Press, 1972.

“This is surreal, how each grain of moondust falls into place in these little fans, almost like rose petals.”
- Buzz Aldrin (during his first Moonwalk, July 1969), Page 38, ‘Magnificent Desolation’, B. Aldrin, Bloomsbury, 2009.

Our Sun’s brightness is gradually increasing by about 10 % every billion years.
– McNab, David & Younger, James, ‘The Planets’, BBC Worldwide,1999.

[In one of those delightful astronomical paradoxes, the more our Sun burns up its fuel and loses mass the hotter, brighter and larger it gets - up to a point and whilst it remains on the core-hydrogen burning main sequence anyhow - Ed.]

@8. Chris A. :

“But from well over a million kilometers away…the Moon is smaller…” Of course, the sun is smaller too. Just not as much.

Actually they both remain the same size – it just doesn’t appear that way from the varying distances!

Well, our Moon *is* shrinking slightly but not so much that you’d notice. Actually, the Sun is shrinking too – losing mass in the form of the solar wind and via the conversion of mass into energy at the core but, again, not so much that we can detect it visually.

More specifically, it moves in a way that keeps it exactly diametrically opposed to the flames through the lens’s center (i.e., its position relative to the lens center, in polar coordinates, is THETA (“horseman”) = THETA(flame) + 180 and R(“horseman”) = R(flame)).

Congratulations, Naomi–your baloney filter is working properly.

To those who are convinced that it really is the “horseman”, all I can say is: “Oh pareidolia-plus-ignorance-of-optics, is there anything you _can’t_ see?”

Of course, the sun is smaller too. Just not as much.

Also! What’s your take on this video? http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2ea_1297095577 People are saying it’s one of the four horsemen of the apocalype, but I think it looks more like an upside down reflection of the flames (especially since it moves with the camera).

Seriously, do we have further probes scheduled for launch so that we can maintain a 360° view of the sun beyond the next 8 years?

From Earth, that would be a solar eclipse, where the black disk of the Moon would look the same size as the bright Sun.

Well, we do have annular eclipses, but that’s not quite the same thing as this video. (Which, by the way, I remember seeing the first time you posted it. Has it really been nearly 4 years?)

But, you know what would have topped that, if things had lined up “better”? Both the Earth and the Moon transiting the Sun at the same time, or in quick succession.

humans are a spacefaring species

I only wish we were moreso a spacefaring species instead of only a very few of us with vast resources to dedicate to it.