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Bad Astronomy review: Terra Nova

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It was posted on October 17th, 2011 at 6:30 AM.

@Steve – If you follow Phil’s link to the moon calculator, you will see the apogee and perigee vary each month. As Pete Jackson said, it has to do with the fact that the sun does interact (weakly) with the moon. There is also the fact that the earth is not stationary relative to the moon either. The earth has to orbit the sun so when the moon is “behind” the earth it has to than “catch up” and when it is “in front” of the earth it gains back that distance it lost. Also the earth does not orbit the sun at a constant velocity because its orbit is also an ellipse, so Kepler’s laws dictate here. (I know, some physicists are going to yell at me because this isn’t a technically robust explanation, but I’m just trying to get the principle there).

Phil has occasionally posted pictures taken by talented “amateurs” of the extremely thin crescents just after New Moon, but those shots are extremely difficult to take.

You mean like this post here? :

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/05/05/newest-of-new-moons/

Which is updated here :

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/05/07/update-on-record-crescent-moon-sighting/

(The link added to that first story doesn’t seem to be working, btw.)

Plus this one :

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/04/21/record-breaker-newest-new-moon-spotted/

for instance?

Guess we could call that a “Cheshire Cat Moon” – our Moon when its nothing but a faint smile line – to go with the “Lemon Slice Moon” phase.

*****

PS. Click on my name for a “Lemon Slice Moon” photo – glad I’m not the only one to think of our Moon like that in that phase & that someone else is good enough to capture that & put it on flickr. Thanks Owen Christopher Wolter. )

Technically, yes. The moment of New Moon is when the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun (not exactly, though; so it’s rarely a solar eclipse, of course). For half the planet, it will be night-time at that moment, and neither the Moon nor the Sun will be visible because they’re both on the other side of the planet. New Moons are indeed only visible during the day.

The United States Naval Observatory has a page on those here:
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/cgi-bin/aa_moonphases.pl?year=2011&ZZZ=END
Notice that the New Moon on November 25th 2011 will happen at 06:10 UT, which means if you’re on the East Coast of the US (EST = UT-5), it’ll happen at 1:10 AM. Or maybe EST is UT-4, in which case it’ll happen at 2:10 AM; I always forget. Either way, it happens at night.

Of course, if you’re not as neurotically precise as USNO, we consider the entire DAY that includes the New Moon to be “New Moon”, so you can see it later in the day on the 25th. There won’t be much to see though. Phil has occasionally posted pictures taken by talented “amateurs” of the extremely thin crescents just after New Moon, but those shots are extremely difficult to take.

#2 Pete Jackson:
“So a perigee full moon in January will be 28% brighter than an apogee full moon in July. Getting to be quite a difference!”

Yes, but since our eyes response to light level is logarithmic, the difference still isn’t all that apparent.