Friday, June 26, 2009

LUNA

The mooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooon. (moon)

Lets start from the beginning. Well, not the beginning because that's really far back. Gabby. Gabby has a cool camera. Jamie. Jamie likes Gabby's cool camera because Gabby takes cool pictures with it. Jamie buys camera in hopes that despite the fact that she KNOWS its the person operating the camera and not the camera itself that makes a good picture...that somehow she can prove this fact false. Jamie is determined to take a cool picture of the moon.

Tonight. Jamie succeeds! woop. The cool thing about this is... I was just talking about the moon earlier today.

First. I heard on the radio the other day that there was a rocket sent to the moon! It is carrying 2 robotic space crafts to map and record the surface of the moon for future human landings!!!!! and to search for water!
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090622.html

"Now LRO begins its primary mission of mapping the lunar surface to find future landing sites and searching for resources that would make possible a permanent human presence on the moon. Over the next several days, LRO's instruments will be turned on and its final orbit around the moon will be reached."

sweeeeeet.

Second...which happened before First actually but I mentioned it today which my mentioning happened after First.. so therefore it is second.... Alex informed me that the moon rises and sets. That explains why the moon looks so freakishly (yet wonderfully and beautifully) large and yellow/orange in the beginning of the night when it is Full. That's what I brought up today.

Thiiiird. I took a successful picture of the waxing crescent tonight!

So, now that you have the explanation for this post. Let us get on with the post.

Speaking of waxing...

phases of the moon.

new moon. waxing crescent. first quarter. waxing gibbous. full. waning gibbous. last quarter. waning crescent.

so from the new moon... you wax your car. then it effin wanes. bastard.

anyway. The moon. It's the fifth largest moon in our solar system and the largest moon relative to the planet. I am, by the way, looking at websites for kids which explains things in dumby terms so that I understand it.. and they repeat things in every paragraph. I wasn't particularly interested in the fact that to moon is the fifth largest moon in our solar system.... but because I read it so many times.. Now its stuck there. and...now you know.

I also learned that a way to easily tell if the moon is getting larger or bigger when its a crescent.. is to see if it looks like the letter "C." If it's a "C" then its "Collapsing" and getting smaller.

awesome.

If I were a guy, my sperm count would be getting lowered because this laptop is really hot on my..lap. But I'm not. so it's not.

The moon takes 27 days to go around the earth once. So that means that its full only about 13 times in a year. If I live till I'm 80 I'll will have gotten to see the full moon about 1040 times.... but I've already missed 268 Full moons (well, not including the ones that I've actually seen..) but that means that I only have 771 full moons left..if I live till 80. hmm

"If you check on the Moon several times during one night, you will notice that it moves relative to the stars around it." hmm

"Have you ever heard the term the 'far-side' (ehhemmm the dark side) of the Moon? The Earth's gravity produces tidal forces on the Moon. This causes the same side of the moon to always face the Earth. People living on the Earth can never see the 'far-side' of the Moon, unless they go there! Tidal forces cause many of the moons of our solar system to always face their planets."

"Most of the tidal effects seen on the Earth are caused by the Moon's gravitational pull, with the Sun making a somewhat smaller contribution. Tidal drag slows the Earth's rotation by about 0.002 seconds per day per century." wooah.

Why is the moon in a different position every night?

that link brings you to a more detailed answer. But, it basically says that it is because the moon is always moving...unlike the stars which a pretty much stationary. So the moon's motion has two parts to it. It looks like it's moving around the earth once per day along with everything else, but in addition to that it is actually moving around the earth once per month. That is what makes it move to a different place on the sky.

But what's really really interesting is that "It is even possible to watch the moon move, if you are patient enough. If you carefully keep track of the moon and a nearby star for an hour or so, you should be able to see the distance between them change!"

WOW! I definitely want to do that.

Photobucket


excited.

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