Is it me or is the moon freakishly bright tonight? Call me crazy and most folk do, but it's almost eerie out there...I'm at work, as usual, monitoring a construction site in Dartmouth, NS. I just went outside to do my rounds and I looked down at the ground and I nearly jumped in surprise at seeing my very bold shadow on the ground. I thought it was something scuffling along by my feet!! As I looked around, I realized everything on this site is visible from just outside the trailer. It's BIZARRE.
Tonight is literally the first night in three months of patrolling this site that I haven't used a flashlight. Everything is illuminated light grey or brown! This shouldn't be! I even looked up at the moon for a while and realized it's so bright that it's just a giant white circle - I can't make out any craters or pockmarks at all because of the intensity of the light!
Either I smoked something I'm not aware of, or something really unique and wonderful is going on in the sky tonight. I encourage you all to take a walk outside tonight, everything looks so different from what you'd expect!
Any space buffs around who can enlighten me as to whether there's a strange alignment or angle or something? I'd love to know what's going on. It really is strange to be able to see this well at night, and I've never seen a shadow so bold on such bright ground at night. It's like being under a white halogen streetlight in a parking lot.
I noticed that too..it's because the Hip were in Toronto! lol..
i noticed that yesterday morning as i had a 3 hr drive starting at 3:30am...didn`t even need to use hi-beams on the vehicle
Dammit! I'm an astronomy student, I should know this! Hang on, I'll check it out on my school's physics site.
Okay, so for all non-astronomy literate people out there, the ecliptic is the rough path that the sun traces across the sky. It is also the projection of the earth's orbit onto the celestial sphere, which is the big projection screen sort of thing that we look at to see stars. Apparently, the moon is quite high above the ecliptic this week which causes it to be brighter than normal. As to why that is, I don't know. For fun, Tuesday night, check out the moon at moonrise in the evening, it will be a waning gibbous moon sometime in the early evening. Saturn will be close by! But only for a short time. Planets rise and set on our celestial sphere quite quickly.
That's pretty cool...thanks for figuring it out! I found out that in old Farmer's Almanacs, the moons of different months had names - Harvest Moon, Snow Moon etc - and November's is "Bright Moon". Pretty funny coincidence that I would actually notice this...but I knew there had to be some scientific explanation behind it, so thanks for taking the time to look it up!
The moon goes up...
I start to sweat...
It was also a full moon on Friday... combined with the space-mumbo-jumbo that Jeff said, probably helped...
fingernailsonhull Wrote:Okay, so for all non-astronomy literate people out there, the ecliptic is the rough path that the sun traces across the sky. It is also the projection of the earth's orbit onto the celestial sphere, which is the big projection screen sort of thing that we look at to see stars. Apparently, the moon is quite high above the ecliptic this week which causes it to be brighter than normal. As to why that is, I don't know. For fun, Tuesday night, check out the moon at moonrise in the evening, it will be a waning gibbous moon sometime in the early evening. Saturn will be close by! But only for a short time. Planets rise and set on our celestial sphere quite quickly.
First, the Ecliptic *IS* the path the Sun takes across the sky as we orbit it. Secondly the position of the Moon along the ecliptic doesn't change above or below really that much. A number of degrees on either side of it as it orbits our planet. Also the Moon can be at perigee (closest to Earth) or at apogee (farthest from the Earth) as it orbits us in its slightly eliptical orbit. It can appear bigger or brighter at that time especially when it's near or on a full moon. Last night's moon was about 20 hours past full moon (called the Beaver Moon).
The Moon this time of year is higher in the sky due to the tilt of the Earth's axis plus the crisp cool clarity of the air can make it appear bright. The air straight overhead is 13 times less dense than the atmosphere at the horizon. You're looking through less air, less dust particulate and haze. I was out a few times last and noticed it. It was really brilliant.
Saturn is really cool through my telescope now. Can see a lot of cool details on it at high magnification. Saturn isn't going away (or setting) it is only rising earlier and earlier as the days go on so by mid January Saturn will be rising near sunset so once it's dark it will easy to spot near the constellation of Gemini.
Hip fan and amateur astronomer
High
Thanks for clearing up my mistakes High. To be honest, I'm only taking a non-science major astronomy course, so I'm not really an authority on the subject (sheepish grin). I pulled my info from my university site for the course. I hate it when I'm wrong, but love when I can understand my errors :thumb: Thanks for the watchful eye.
I noticed that last night. I got out of the car and saw my shadow on the ground. It was very weird.