Hi Dave, When the moon was full on 30 December, its declination was 24 degrees north. Using the formula below this would put it at an altitude of 76.7 degrees at your latitude. This is half a degree higher than the sun ever gets at your latitude. The moon can get to a declination of ~29 degrees as its orbital plane is tilted about 6 degrees from the ecliptic. The moon can get even closer to the zenith at your location.
It is hard to judge how close celestial bodies are to the zenith. One trick is to turn around, full circle while watching the body. The distance from the zenith is much more apparent when you have seen it from all sides as you turn. Roger Bailey Walking Shadow Designs N 51 w 115 where the sun only gets to an altitude of 15.5 degrees these days! -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Dave Bell Sent: January 6, 2002 6:20 PM To: Sundial, Mailinglist Subject: Was Re: Polar ceiling sundial On Sun, 6 Jan 2002, fer j. de vries wrote: > The max. altitude of the sun h = 90 - phi + 23.5 degrees. This reminded me of something I saw recently, that was a bit of a puzzle: I live at 37.3N latitude. This puts the mean plane of the Ecliptic at something like 52.7 degrees elevation. Near the Winter Solstice, the Sun is 23.5 degrees depressed, or a maximum elevation of 29.2 degrees. I can't recall offhand what the angle of the Moon's orbit is, relative to the Ecliptic, but a week or so back, very near full Moon, we came out of a movie theater late, near midnight. I would swear the Moon was barely 5 or 10 degrees off the Zenith! It seemed hard to imagine, at this time of year in the North... Dave 37.29N 121.97W
