How bright is the Moon? Given its relatively close proximity to Earth, and the fact that we're looking at it all the time, you'd think that would be an easy question to answer. Turns out you'd be wrong.
We're usually looking at the Moon from Earth, through the atmosphere. That creates just enough interference that the amount of sunlight reflected off the lunar surface - a measurement called spectral irradiance - cannot be calculated with more than 97 percent accuracy.
Quite a lot has been going on:
How to See The 'Full Cold Moon' This Week | Travel + Leisure
Will you spot the “Cold Moon” this month? December’s full moon gets its name from the time of year when temperatures drop and it begins to get really cold. After all, December 22 is the solstice — the longest night of the year — and the official onset of winter in the Northern Hemisphere.
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The night of a full moon is the only night of the month when the moon rises around sunset, shines brilliantly all night, and sets around sunrise the following morning. The moment when the Cold Moon is precisely full and 100% illuminated by the sun is 12:12 a.m. EST on December 12 for those on the east coast and 9:12 p.m. PST on December 11 for those on the west coast. However, that’s not the optimal time to observe the full Cold Moon.
Winslow Homer's 'Kissing the Moon': Puzzling Over Painting's Meaning | National Review
I 've written about so many subjects the last few months: China, India, Venice, Madrid. This week, I'd like to stay local, more or less, and write about one painting. Kissing the Moon , by Winslow Homer (1836–1910) is the strangest picture. Homer, Eakins, Cole, and Whistler are America's Old Masters — yes, there are a few more — but this late painting, a big, stunning thing from 1904, has been ignored.
It's in the stellar collection of the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy's museum in Andover, Mass. It's a place for connoisseurs and students, free and open to the public. It's also one of the best collections of American art, tucked in a private high-school campus in an elegant Charles Platt-designed building. All the players from Copley to Pollock to Mark Bradford and Cindy Sherman are represented by work of the highest quality.
When And Where To Watch A Rare 'Cold Moon Kiss' This Week As Venus And Saturn Appear Super-Close
Go outside after dark this month in the northern hemisphere and you can see the glittering stars of winter rising in the east in a cold, crisp and (hopefully) clear sky, from awesome Orion to scintillating Sirius. However, the year's best seasonal star-fields take a back seat this week as the moon and two planets each do something rather eye-catching.
Take a look to the southwest just after dark this weekend and you'll see the brilliant planet Venus at its dazzling best, and close to it, rather dimmer Saturn. As the week commences Venus will appear to "catch-up" on the ringed planet and, by Wednesday, overtake it.
While you're here, how about this:
What if there was no moon? | Chicago Weather Watch
We look up at the moon, and what do we see? Do we see what poets saw, what astronomers in Egypt and Persia saw thousands of years ago? There are human footprints on the moon, now. The moon is a muse, a mirror, a metaphor. It is familiar, and changing as our own faces.
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Would we have clocks and calendars? How would cultures with lunar-based calendars be different? Would there be poetry, romance, werewolves and vampires? There would be no eclipses. No moonlight. What would we imagine in its place?
The full moon is rising high | News, Sports, Jobs - Marshall Independent
Even though our next official full moon is this coming this Thursday we more or less have a full moon every night this week in the Marshall sky, putting the kibosh on any serious stargazing or astrophotography. Even if you don’t have to put up with light pollution the moon kicks out so much reflected secondhand sunshine that all but the brighter stars get visually done in.
The reason the full moon rides so high across the night sky this time of year is twofold. It has to do with the Earth’s tilted axis and the fact that all full moons lie almost directly opposite the sun in the celestial dome.
Redmond company sending US back to the moon, beyond - seattlepi.com
REDMOND, Wash. -- One Puget Sound area company is slated to propel the United States back to the moon, and beyond. But in a way, it's part of a much bigger story.
Aerojet Rocektdyne was recently awarded a major contract from Lockheed Martin. It not only secures nearly a decade's worth of work for the Redmond company, it means that the propulsion systems on NASA's Orion spacecraft will come from Western Washington. Humankind is essentially on a launchpad into the future, with the engines currently priming -- the destination is farther than people have ever traveled. Companies like Aerojet Rockedyne are behind those engines.
This week's full moon occurs on 12/12 at 12:12 a.m. – WKRG News 5
Twelve has significance when it comes to our relative understanding of space and time. There are 12 months in a year, and our days are split in two groups of 12 hours.
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SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Fresh out of boot camp, Cameron Walters proudly told his father in Georgia during their nightly video chat that he had passed the exam qualifying him to stand watch and help secure building entrances at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation's business economists expect U.S. economic growth to decelerate this year and next but for the economy to avoid stumbling into recession, extending a record-breaking expansion already in its 11th year.
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