NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Patrick Goold
Date: 2012 Aug 1, 12:24 -0400
Tom, you wrote: "I stand in awe!"
Thank you, Tom. Thank you... Lest you think I have finished, I will say in the legendary words of John Paul Jones, "I have not yet begun to geek out!"
It seems like only yesterday I was talking about an over-sized Moon in an advertising illustration, and today I spotted another. This time it's not from a restaurant down the road from me but from one of the world's biggest corporations way out there in Silicon Valley... I was working tonight, with the TV on, and a commercial for the "Google Nexus 7 tablet" caught my attention. In the commercial a father and son are on a camping trip doing all sorts of wonderful things with their tablet in the wilderness (ridiculously bad idea, of course), and while I was marveling at the WiFi reception they seem to be getting way out there in the middle of nowhere, they showed an image of the Moon and Orion (why look at the real sky while camping when you have it on your tablet? I sense this commercial was made by city-dwellers!). And sure enough, just like yesterday (it WAS only yesterday), the Moon is ridiculously over-sized and Orion is correctly displayed providing an angular scale. In this case, it appears to be somewhat more than ten degrees in angular diameter, so the tidal forces would be about 8000 times higher than they currently are. I hope they are camping in the mountains! :) I can see a couple of other problems with the Moon in this image. But I won't spoil the fun. I am attaching a screen capture from the commercial for your entertainment. :)
-FER
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Patrick Goold
Department of Philosophy
Virginia Wesleyan College
Norfolk, VA 23502
757 455 3357