NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Rommel John Miller
Date: 2015 Sep 28, 09:42 -0400
Don’t get me wrong, what I saw last night was spectacular, except for the intermittent clouds that disturbed the view in Hebron, MD.
I am color blind and maybe this is where the disorder affects me most in the subtle differences and shifts in color in stars, planets and natural satellites.
Commonly I am red/green blind, but it might go deeper, and what I saw in the moon last night was maybe 2% growth and very intense shifts in greys as the satellite emerged from earth’s shadow.
Granted on the horizon and just rising the moon here was larger than normal, but I attribute that to the atmospheric distortion at the horizon. I’d saw there that the moon was 5% larger in appearance.
No one discusses the idea of light diffraction on this list and I find it essential to understanding near earth objects as well as deep space ones. As water in a bubble will magnify that which is behind it, so too does the fluid atmosphere tend to distort and make things to appear larger to our eyes here on earth. I do believe that this is what Michelangelo was talking about in his notebooks on the subject of super moons as opposed to the moon we see at zenith.
And even at zenith, we on earth are not in the vacuum of space, so distortion happens there too but not as severe as near the base of the horizon. Why? Light air rises and heavy air sinks.
Heavy air contributes to severe diffraction and even colorization. And I have seen blood red moons in my day, at least what I believe to be red.
Thing is it was rather spectacular but just the same old moon here in Hebron, MD USA.
Rommel John Miller
8679 Island Pointe Drive
Hebron, MD 21830-1093
410-219-2690 (Land and Home)
443-365-7925 (Cell)
From: NavList@fer3.com [mailto:NavList@fer3.com] On Behalf Of Geoffrey Kolbe
Sent: Monday, September 28, 2015 4:12 AM
To: rommeljohnmiller@gmail.com
Subject: [NavList] Re: Was it a "super moon" or just the same old moon?
Here in Scotland (the Borders in the South of Scotland) the sky was brilliantly clear. The moon at totality was definitely red! A dark red rather than a blood red, to be true, but it was a 'red moon'!
Geoffrey Kolbe
Dr Geoffrey Kolbe, Riccarton Farm, Newcastleton, Scotland, TD9 0SN
Tel: 013873 76715
Mob: 0773 8069 663
On Mon, Sep 28, 2015 at 4:57 AM, Rommel John Miller <NoReply_Miller@fer3.com> wrote:
Okay, we are just emerging from totality at 10:23 pm local Hebron, MD time.
No blood red moon, nothing but the same old silver colored disk that when it is full is termed “moon bright.”
What all the fuss over these myths of super moons is about when any physicist in the field of Astronomy could tell you, it just isn’t true.
But I guess some ship board sailors and navigators out there still put faith in St. Elmo and his strange “fire.”
Oh well, I always thought science would dispel myth, not perpetuate them.
But Barnum was right, one is born every minute.
Rommel John Miller
8679 Island Pointe Drive
Hebron, MD 21830-1093
410-219-2690 (Land and Home)
443-365-7925 (Cell)
