FWIS3

Was taking some pix for a project, and happened to look up...
A nice full moon over the reservoir at the end of the street...

Even after the hundreds, thousands of times I've seen the Moon, it always makes me smile!

I was thinking about resurrecting my Moon thread just a day or so ago. Now I don't have to. This morning driving in, it was windy and cloudy. As I neared my exit, a light suddenly appeared in the grey brown sky. The full moon slowly appeared for a few seconds, then it was gone again.

I remember posting something to the tune of, "Will I ever get tired of looking at the Moon?" And Mike simply replied, "Nope."

Might be one of my favorite xkcd comics ever.

Nice moon here last night too. We are doing PhD recruitment right now (ye gods, I am so excited to just sit and work on my sofa this weekend doing all the things I haven't been able to do!) and we took the students on a dinner/canal boat tour, and had a squall of hail and lightning right before we got on. Moon came out by the time we were off the boat- and wow, Jupiter was bright too!

Every time I think about the moon I am reminded of this stupid book I read.
Basically it was one of these positive thinking books that I was told I "must read" so tried and failed miserably only getting through a few chapters while gritting my teeth.
The premise was that the guy climbed this mystical mountain and when he reached the top he could understand how the stars seemed to rotate around the Earth, the Earth rotated around the Sun and he could see understand that depending on where he was on the Earth he saw different phases of the moon to someone at another location.
At that point I had enough. Mumbo jumbo from an idiot that can't even be bothered to do the most basic research while claiming superior knowledge.
Can't remember the name of the book though. I managed to expel that from my brain to make room for something more realistic, like images of unicorns or something but I can't seem to get rid of that dumb assed version of how the moon phases are different in different parts of the world at the same time.

Speaking of books and the moon...

I remember when I was about 4 years old I got a book from the library all about this little boy's trip to the moon, sorta in a 2001-esque style, and that was one of my favorite books my dad had read to me at that point. I also remember I was a kid who was very careful about asking "did that really happen?" and "is that really true?" when people told me stories, so I asked the same about this one, and when my dad told me people actually have gone to the moon (but it wasn't quite like in the book) I was seriously excited and remember spotting the moon during the day and being really excited that people have gone there.

That night though when my dad realized an oversight he had to correct, telling me that people haven't gone for decades, I was so very disappointed. Seriously, I don't know if any other truth ever disappointed me more as a child.

People haven't been to the moon in over 40 years. Just over 42 years actually.
42...
Now wouldn't it be cool if someone landed there 42 years after the last mission.

FZR1KG wrote:People haven't been to the moon in over 40 years. Just over 42 years actually.
42...
Now wouldn't it be cool if someone landed there 42 years after the last mission.

Nope, 41. It will be 42 in December. I know because MrPi was born during the last Apollo Mission--December 12 1972. There is still hope!

Oops. Brain fart. I stand corrected.

Hilariously appropriate- an astronomer got married via moonbounce this weekend, first time in history! I happen to know the astronomer, and they did this at the Dwingeloo telescope that I wrote an article about.

English starts at 2min in, vows around 5min in- link