<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>I've never been to the north pole, but I have been to Antarctica, and I can tell you first hand that it does go away there. Here's a picture I took. Notice that the gibbous moon is pointing almost parallel to the horizon, even though it is not far above the horizon. The sun, not visible in the picture, is also near the horizon, as it must be in Antarctica. So the moon points along the horizon to the sun. The effect is gone.http://orbitsimulator.com/Antarctica/1024/IMG_72191024.jpg I gave you photographic evidence in the above post. When the tripod's azimuthal axis is parallel to flat ground, the effect is obvious. When the tripod's asimuthal axis is orientated along the moon/sun line, the effect goes away, and the moon points directly to the sun. As a side effect, a new effect is introduced: the horizon bends, as evidenced in the picture. Imagine two objects sitting on the horizon, pointing to each other, one on the left edge, and one on the right edge. In the middle image they would not appear to point to each other due to the fisheye effect.The fisheye effect is most notable in wide-angle photography. The human eye has a very wide-angle view, almost 180 degrees, so the fisheye effect is very prevelant in our vision. Our brains process what we see, and lessen our perception of the fisheye effect. That's why when you take a picture of someone at very close range, they appear to have a large nose, but whey you stand close to them, all looks normal. This sun/moon illusion is just something our brains have not been programmed to correct.If you don't trust photographic evidence, there is something very easy you can try. Get a piece of stiff cardboard, or any other flat plane. Go outside at a time when a waxing gibbous moon is in the daytime sky. Hold the cardboard in front of your nose, parallel to the ground, and parallel to the line that connects your eyes, so that half of what you see is above the cardboard, and half is below. In essence, you are creating an artifical horizon. Keeping the cardboard in this orientation with respect to your eyes, tilt your head so that both the sun and the moon are on the artifical horizon. You'll notice that the moon points along your artifical horizon, directly to the sun. This is basically the view you would have from the north or south pole.I just tried this again 10 minutes ago, so I can guarantee you it works. Today is a good day to try this, at least where I live (west coast USA). The sky is clear, and a gibbous moon is visible in the morning sky. It only needs to be at infinity with respect to the viewer, so that both objects sit on what we percieve to be the sphere of the sky. If the sun and moon were equidistant from Earth (of course, hypothetically scale the sun's size, or we'd be in it!), nothing would change. That's because the line that connects the light source to the sphere becomes more and more horizontal as you move it away. The lines connecting the horns must keep up and remain perpendicular to this horizontal-tending line. <br /> Posted by secondAttempt</DIV></p><p> </p><p><font size="2">My apologies, I misunderstood your post. Yes, at the north pole (and south pole too) since the ecliptic and horizon more or less coincide, what you are saying is true.</font> </p><p><font size="2">However I believe the original post was about why when the a line is drawn between the horns of a half moon (first quarter), a line perpendicular to that line doesn't point to the sun. Your photo </font><font size="2">
http://koti.kapsi.fi/~leknu/moon-sun.jpg illustrates this very clearly. That photo was not taken with a fisheye lens but with a panoramic camera. Note that even though the horizon is not at the center of the photo, it isn't curved as it would be with a fisheye lens. Although the photo looks distorted it really isn't. We would see the same image if many photos were taken with a normal camera of all parts of the scene and pasted together.<br /></font></p><p> <font size="2">Now if we do on that photo what the original poster suggested and draw a line connecting the horns of the moon and draw another line perpendicular to that line, it's obvious that line will not point to the sun and it's not due to photgraphic distortion. However, that line does point along the ecliptic and the ecliptic does reach the sun. Only at the poles where the ecliptic coincides with the horizon (as you said), we don't get this effect.</font> </p>
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