Ha-ha, I hear you! From Christmas until about the second week in January, it was dipping below 20 at night both here and back home in DFW. Daytime highs sometimes not above freezing, and it was windy to boot. Way too much cold for most of us! And don't get me started on the saga of my car battery dying while I'm at home taking care of my flu-infected wife, and me having to tote it and a replacement to and from Sears, trudging half a mile each way in bone chilling cold, bearing that not insignificant weight!
----- Original Message ----- From: "C.W. Badie" <astromancer2...@yahoo.com> To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, January 29, 2010 4:37:40 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [scifinoir2] "Wolf" Moon Tonight to be Spectacular--if you can see it It's 6 degrees here in Chicago...rain...Hmph! "Such music flows on the Fringe, and no one can resist singing to Scarlet" >From "THE SIDE STREET CHRONICLES" by C.W. Badie --- On Fri, 1/29/10, Keith Johnson <keithbjohn...@comcast.net> wrote: From: Keith Johnson <keithbjohn...@comcast.net> Subject: [scifinoir2] "Wolf" Moon Tonight to be Spectacular--if you can see it To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com Date: Friday, January 29, 2010, 3:00 PM And here it'll be cloudy and rainy tonight in the ATL... :( Oh well, it's great to read about, and I really dig the different full moon names from Native culture. ************ ********* ********* http://news. yahoo.com/ s/space/20100129 /sc_space/ biggestandbright estfullmoonof201 0tonight http://www.space. com/spacewatch/ full-moon- names-2010- 100127.html Biggest and Brightest Full Moon of 2010 Tonight SPACE.com A full moon is seen over the Houses of Parliament in LondonReuters – A full moon is seen over the Houses of Parliament in London January 1, 2010. REUTERS/Dylan Martinez … Robert Roy Britt Editorial Director SPACE.com Robert Roy Britt editorial Director space.com – Fri Jan 29, 7:45 am ET Tonight's full moon will be the biggest and brightest full moon of the year. It offers anyone with clear skies an opportunity to identify easy-to-see features on the moon. This being the first full moon of 2010, it is also known as the wolf moon, a moniker dating back to Native American culture and the notion that hungry wolves howled at the full moon on cold winter nights. Each month brings another full moon name . But why will this moon be bigger than others? Here's how the moon works : The moon is, on average, 238,855 miles (384,400 km) from Earth. The moon's orbit around Earth – which causes it to go through all its phases once every 29.5 days – is not a perfect circle, but rather an ellipse. One side of the orbit is 31,070 miles (50,000 km) closer than the other. So in each orbit, the moon reaches this closest point to us, called perigee. Once or twice a year, perigee coincides with a full moon, as it will tonight, making the moon bigger and brighter than any other full moons during the year. Tonight it will be about 14 percent wider and 30 percent brighter than lesser full Moons of the year, according to Spaceweather. com . As a bonus, Mars will be just to the left of the moon tonight. Look for the reddish, star-like object. Full moon craziness Many people think full moons cause strange behavior among animals and even humans. In fact several studies over the years have tried to tie lunar phases to births, heart attacks, deaths, suicides, violence, psychiatric hospital admissions and epileptic seizures, and more. Connections have been inclusive or nonexistent. The moon does have some odd effects on our planet, and there are oodles of other amazing moon facts and misconceptions: • A full moon at perigee also brings higher ocean tides . This tug of the moon on Earth also creates tides in the planet's crust, not just in the oceans. • Beaches are more polluted during full moon, owing to the higher tides. • In reality, there's no such thing as a full moon. The full moon occurs when the sun, Earth and the moon are all lined up, almost. If they're perfectly aligned, Earth casts a shadow on the moon and there's a total lunar eclipse . So during what we call a full moon, the moon's face is actually slightly less than 100 percent illuminated. • The moon is moving away as you read this, by about 1.6 inches (4 cm) a year. The moon illusion Finally, be sure to get out and see the full moon as it rises, right around sunset. Along the horizon, the moon tends to seem even bigger. This is just an illusion. You can prove to yourself that this is an illusion. Taking a small object such as a pencil eraser, hold it at arm's length, and compare its size to that of the moon just as it rises. Then repeat the experiment later in the night and you'll see that the moon compares the same in both cases. Alternately, snap two photos of the moon, with a digital camera or your cell phone, when the moon is near the horizon and later when it's higher in the sky. Pull both photos up on your computer screen and make a side-by-side comparison. Astronomers and psychologists agree the moon illusion is just that, but they don't agree on how to explain it
