500 years ago, Leonardo da Vinci explained the phenomenon when he realized that both Earth and the Moon reflect sunlight. The dim light is reflected from the Earth to the Moon and back to the Earth as Earthshine. The bright crescent is plain ole moonshine.
As seen this evening
I was wondering tonight while walking why was my sky so dark. "Moonless week", I guessed. But now I see what was really going on…
She was there posing for you.
Same moon as seen here in Seoul Korea… right this very moment! Funny, I was thinking to take a picture of it, but I see you already have. Thanks for sharing.
Sister72: I believe the "star" that was close to the moon was actually the planet Venus.
As walked into church last night I saw this and one bright "star" in the early evening night. I wished that I had my camera. I am planning to look tonight but with the current snow falling I’m guessing I missed my chance.
It was an incredible sight, unfortunately it only lasted a brief time as it was in the western sky early in the evening.
Pardon the question, but perhaps you know… I am seeing from my window (points southwest – southern hemisphere) a star which was not there ever before, with a tail, like a shooting star but with a longer tail and completely still, it doesn´t move. And it is quite close to the horizon -the city lights seem to dim its own-
Is this a comet? Is any comet visiting us these days? Never seen one before… I wish I could take a good pic, but they all turn black.
Alieness: just hold out your thumb for a ride, and don’t forget your towel.
The Comet McNaught is swinging by Argentina to pick you up.
For a photo, you will have to have a tripod or steady base. Use the 2 second timer (to remove jitter from the button press), and put it in manual mode (if you can) for a long exposure at infinity focus.
And yes, that super-bright point was Venus.
Vanita: whoa! It was Buzz Aldrin’s birthday when I took this shot yesterday. Very subliminally spooky. I have not thought to take a moon shot for months…. and then that’s the day I pick. I must be still Buzzing… (but tell the M man that it was all in my grand plan… =)
@TheAlieness – What you saw was this
I’m in envy that you got to see it with your own eyes.
-scurry
wow, thank you Drona, and Steve and Scurry for the info! Didn´t know about this, but it is exactly what the other pics show. Precisely.
I guess that to try a photo -thx for the tips, steve |-) – I should try to catch it like half an hour before, when it is enough dark, but the dude is not so close to the horizon.
I am still impressed with a thing, tho… -which still impresses me about anything astronomy-related- that the comet is a thing in motion, yet we are able to see it still and for a couple of days (I know it has to do with the "light years" thing (distance/time), but it´s difficult to grasp the concept… It´s like we are in fact looking at a "photo" of the comet -taken a lot of time ago (depends on how far the buddy passed from the Earth) rather than the actual comet…. Right?!
RIGHT?????? O_o
(Heeeeeelllllllp!)
cool pic. nice coincidence.
yeah GG, except that it passed pretty close to Earth, and what you see is probably still less than an hour old. the "motion" thing is only hard to grasp because of the scale, distance and brightness involved – not related to speed of light, but certainly a question of relativity in another sense. i understand what you mean though, given that i stood in massive awe of Hale Bopp and experienced the same feeling, imagining the speed of an apparently stationary thing, getting carried right away in a sort of Olaf Stapledon "Star Maker" kind of a perspective-levelling experience.
we can’t have flashy multicoloured meteorites / dodgy atmosphere-skimming asteroids all of the time, you know! 😉
incidentally, i’m very jealous – McNaught crept up on everyone to be outstanding, and the media response in the UK was (and remains) absolutely pathetic – so much so that there was nothing carried on usual mainstream outlets for days and days, well beyond the one clear day we happened to have in Glasgow (9th Jan) to witness the thing before sunset. note to self: set RSS feed on interesting astronomy sites.
That was a great explanation… I dare say I am understanding you! 😛
Really, I think I understand the point… it´s like perspective when you go on a roadtrip and the farther objects close to the horizon "seem" to move slowly or slower or not to move at all??? Is that the trick?
See, Steveeeeeee! This is what I could do with all your tips, not that bad, because I couldn´t get a tripod or a firm base… and I have also another problem, the street lamp right in front of the lens -to the right-, makes it harder. But nice! Thank you! |-)
Sister, don´t kill yourself.. Venus will still be there for you to have its picture taken for a long time.
Because it´s the planet of Love. It will never turn you down. =)
it´s like perspective when you go on a roadtrip and the farther objects close to the horizon "seem" to move slowly or slower or not to move at all – yeah, but those farther objects you refer to are presumably not ones that move in the first place, ie mountains etc.
it’s all in the tail. while there is great velocity involved, the tail implies extreme motion and makes it seem faster relative to the frame of the sky against which we see it. it’s very hard to find earth-based analogies, because rarely are we in a fixed position observing fast-moving distant objects that are massive enough to appear even temporarily motionless! certain high cirrus clouds might be a rough approximation of the effect if their form were to remain fixed rather than fluid over time…
we should probably also mention the fact that – whether the comet is inbound or outbound – the dust tail extends away from the sun (approximately, and curving… if McNaught had an ion tail as visible as Hale-Bopp’s, that would point directly away from the sun) – so there’s something else which isn’t as it first might appear. apart from the closest few days approaching perihelion (and depending upon the eccentricity of the orbit) the comet is generally moving toward or away from us, rather than laterally across the night sky – despite the tail – and so "moves" even less than one might imagine (or notice if the earth’s rotation were to be stopped for a few weeks to observe it constantly at dusk 🙂 )
when you consider that the tail can be millions upon millions of kilometers long, and that the head (while very bright) is usually less than 50km across, it becomes clearer that for anything to appear to move across the night sky it is either much closer to earth, or travelling many times faster than the speed of light!
but no explanation lessens the sheer wonder of staring at something so beautiful and relatively rare…. and it is fun to have senses deceived by empirical observation… plenty of scientists wake up each morning "knowing" the sun has risen 🙂
maybe we should throw a Sereda cat in amongst the physics pigeons?
and then, to counteract some of the bunkum contained therein, return to Earth with a solid recommendation to read this cracking little book if the chance arises.
poor Steve has had his lovely Earthshine pic and related comments eclipsed by McNaught and beyond – sorry!
nb it is hard to take Sereda seriously when he includes so many typos, including the absolute cracker : "if we follow any pint (sic) in the 4 dimensions over time, from half a second to 250 million years…." etc – unless of course he means to speak of the curved wave-path of the antigravity UFO i just dropped into the large and timeless Guinness sitting in front of me…?
i digress. for anyone who wants to see Comet McNaught satisfyingly in motion – here is the link to a movie taken by the permanently sun-facing Solar & Heliospheric Observatory.
the brightness makes it appear far closer than it actually is, a result of SOHO’s exposure tuning for faint solar corona.
but this is the best example i’ve ever seen of a comet "swinging by" the sun – check it out!
all very interesting! The SOHO video links are fantastic. Are the comets large enough to have any effect on the Sun’s magnetic field and flare activity?
Sereda’s crop circles around p.42. cracked me up. But they are also a bit poignant. Sometimes, when people become unglued, you see archetypal extremes of embedded mental traps, such as the search for "meaning"
good! glad you liked them. i guess you asked that question because of the enormous coronal mass ejection that takes place just after Comet 96P/Machholz swings by its perihelion in the second video? it’s amazing, isn’t it?!
i always presumed their nuclei could never have great enough mass / density to have any influence on something as large as the sun, so in this case just assumed it was a wonderful coincidence.
spot on about Sereda too – a shame that something which might act as an interesting thought experiment and (in places) has apparently sound overviews of known physical processes unhinges itself so completely in the name of Jesus Christ and the deep mystical import of his leaden aphorisms.
the Strange Attractor "Field Guide" to crop-circle making really is a classic, and a good deal of the book revels at the lengths to which some people will go to find "meaning" and avoid admission of error. a fantastic little read.
nature abhors a vacuum, and the "unglued" are often willingly sucked in 🙂
wow, i am right now bookmarking this page… there´s so much to go through here!!! Thank you, biotron, again. I really appreciate that you take time to explain this to me (and to all other bystanders 😉 And steve, thx too.
(hey that "2 sec timer trick" to avoid the moves from clicking… that was neat! I found myself trying it successfully, and giggling and thinking: "This steve… jeez, smart guy." (as if I need further proof whatsoever of that!) 😀
This is a great moon shot – your lens (100-400?) has done a pretty good job of handling the contrast, I must try this.
Like a smile of de-light! It is invited to "FIRST – THE EARTH!" Photo-ART Competition, CAT. #1 -‘THE MOON’, via this link – http://www.flickr.com/groups/348618@N21/discuss/72157600036294015/ . For details and a glimpse [& do send me this in 75×75 html, please], of the ‘Invite Only’ Competition Group see EXHIBITION page – http://www.flickr.com/people/melcir-selfportraits-2006/ . – Mel
Beautiful shot.
A great image, much admired by Donna62 –,
a "FIRST – THE EARTH!" member
You are invited to add it to our group pool!
http://www.flickr.com/groups/first-the-earth/
Thanks for licensing this image as CC "by" !
Your photo is uploaded here :
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Jurvetson_-_Earthshine_(…
under the terms of the Creative Commons "by" license.
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