From a BBC caption of a Full Moon...

"The moon will appear high in the night sky"


Don't full moons appear on the horizon, just after sunset ?............

BTW tonight the full moon will appear bigger as it is closer to the Earth.

Wouldn't the moon, after having appeared on the horizon, continue to rise until it was 'high in the night sky'?

Edit: Oh, I get it. You mean "appear" as in "spring into sight". I guess "appear" in the BBC caption should be taken to mean "be present (at some point)".

Yeah - that one's a bit more semantics. Although being the BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation, and this being a transient astronomical event - it's cloudy. So the correct headline would be "Unusually bright moon to be obscured by cloud"

Doug

So then the full moon might 'spring into sight' high in the night sky, through a gap in the clouds.

The full moon, being opposite the sun, has the reverse of the sun's seasons. In the summer the sun at noon is significantly higher above the horizon than it is at noon during the winter. The reverse is true of the moon, at midnight during the winter the full moon is much higher above the horizon than it was during the summer.

Just to get it all somewhat straight...

The "full Moon" occurs when the Moon is 180 degrees around from the Sun in Earth's skies. That doesn't happen at sunset/moonrise at every point on Earth. In fact, the Moon is only exactly 180 degrees around from the Sun for a split-second. Of course, the *apparent* amount of the visible lunar surface that is sunlit is such that the Moon *appears* full for most everyone around the globe for 15 or so hours on either side of its exact moment of "fullness."

Which brings us to "appear." The verb doesn't just mean to become visible after not having been visible. It also is used to specify in what particular place you can see an object. For example, you often see picture captions with language like "Dione appears in the lower left portion of the image, with Saturn's cloudtops in the background." Or "The rock in question appears in the right-center portion of this image, taken on Sol 743."

When I walk outside well after sunset and see the Moon high in the sky, I can say that "the Moon appears very high, large and bright tonight" without the Moon having been invisible to everyone, everywhere up until the moment I stepped out the door...

-the other Doug

Due to the geometry of the furniture orientation and the bedroom skylight, during a few of the winter months and at fuller phases, the moon will shine through the skylight and hit me square on the face in the early morning hours. Although it's not an official full moon name, I usually refer to this as the "Annoying Moon".

For all practical purposes, this moon "suddenly appeared high in the sky" from my observation point on the pillow.

Score one for the BBC....

Sounds like the ancient Aztecs constructed your home.

!

I just saw Benjamin Button... a pretty good movie, I thought, but when they showed the Moon over the water, it was a mirror image!

Phil

EDIT: this post was entered by my impudent daughter Annie

After 5 years, Mars rovers still going

"Not all of it has been triumphs. A spacecraft carrying an earlier version of the rovers blew up when it was three days from landing on Mars. Successes still amaze Christensen, though, particularly the landing of these rovers."

Huh? What on earth are they babbling about? The TES-instrument on Mars Observer maybe?

At least it wasn't that damn Apollo image they always use with Mare Crisium in the center.

Not to be outdone, UPI published a story today with a caption for the stock MER-on-the-surface painting that was not only clearly written before the MERs landed but also gives Spirit's touchdown date as Jan 3, 2003.

Well, they only had 5 years to correct this...or is it six?

I think one of the reasons for a lot of this dumb reporting is the attitude by the media that with just a little background or by reading one or two articles they can understand anything complex. Listen to Del Palmers audio clips of funny moments and there are two really dumb questions at the end. What's really telling is that in both cases the reporters don't even realize how absurd their questions are. One reporter is interested in the possibility of Meridiani water indicating that perhaps Schiaparelli and Lowell really did see water in their so-called canal observations (a mere hundred or so years ago). The other wants to know if there is going to be definitive proof of life on Mars within the subsequent three weeks.

I don't fault these two guys as members of the public for considering scenarios based on limited discussions of Mars they have learned through popular culture. But for pete's sake, the editor should know enough to send someone who has a superficial inkling of the current understanding of the science involved. While it would be nice for each of them to have a science correspondent, I understand the budget realities of staffing. But with a thing this big on the horizon all they really needed to do was sit someone down with a recent book in the weeks preceding the event. Having worked with the press for so long, I really think there is an arrogance that they know or can know about any topic in a detailed way very easily. Sometimes I think I'd like to hang around a journalism school to try to understand this phenomenon.