Over the years, on my daily morning walk at about 8.00am, I sometimes see the moon up high in the sky when the sun is close to the horizon and to the left of the moon. The illumination of the moon often appeared to coming downwards, at about 45deg. from the left. How can this be if the sun is to the left of the moon and to be below the moon? Like a torch illuminating a football, a perpendicular line can be drawn between the torch and the football but this does not appear to be possible with my observation of the sun and moon. Any explanations?
Sun and Moon
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You are referring to three objects that move through space. The Earth orbits the Sun and the Moon orbits Earth. At different times, varying viewing angles will be observed.
www.earthspacelab.com
There are also seasonal tilts of the Earth's axis and elliptical orbits.
Earth Space Lab â interactive 3D animations ð
Excellent educative app about the Earth in the Space â seasons, solar time, Moon phases, ...
www.earthspacelab.com
There are also seasonal tilts of the Earth's axis and elliptical orbits.
I have to approach this from a very basic level.
1 The moon is illuminated by the sun. This is clearly shown in the 'Solar and Lunar eclipses' in the link. What is also clearly shown is that a line can be drawn from the centre of the sun to the centre of the moon. Just like my torch and football analogy. It doesn't make any difference where the sun-moon/torch-football's are viewed from it will always be possible to draw the connecting line. Am I missing something?
1 The moon is illuminated by the sun. This is clearly shown in the 'Solar and Lunar eclipses' in the link. What is also clearly shown is that a line can be drawn from the centre of the sun to the centre of the moon. Just like my torch and football analogy. It doesn't make any difference where the sun-moon/torch-football's are viewed from it will always be possible to draw the connecting line. Am I missing something?
Catastrophe
"Science begets knowledge, opinion ignorance.
Yes. Look at COLGeek's reply.
Forget all this Sun -Moon stuff for a moment. Just shine a torch at a football. (If you must, the torch is the Sun and the Moon is the football). The illumination of the football is constant (in this example) but the appearance (illumination) of the football is totally dependant on the position of the observer . . . . . . . . . or have I misunderstood your question?
Cat
Forget all this Sun -Moon stuff for a moment. Just shine a torch at a football. (If you must, the torch is the Sun and the Moon is the football). The illumination of the football is constant (in this example) but the appearance (illumination) of the football is totally dependant on the position of the observer . . . . . . . . . or have I misunderstood your question?
Cat
Yes you do understand me but for some reason you seem to think the illumination of the football changes depending on where you view it from. That is correct if you are only considering the football but we have to consider both the football and the torch. Therefore from wherever you view the system you would be able to see a direct line from the torch to the football.
Catastrophe
"Science begets knowledge, opinion ignorance.
Now I do not understand you. Any observer must have a perspective depending on their location nicht wahr?
Cat
OK. Think of it this way. If I sent you a photo of an illuminated football it should be very easy to see the direction of where the illumination was coming from. I am just trying to apply the same logic to the Moon.
Catastrophe
"Science begets knowledge, opinion ignorance.
The illumination is fixed, in this example. However, your viewpoint gives you a different perspective. Consider being directly behind the football. The illumination is the same but your view is that the football is eclipsing the torch.
Cat
Catastrophe
"Science begets knowledge, opinion ignorance.
Our posts crossed. Please answer mine.The illumination is fixed, in this example. However, your viewpoint gives you a different perspective. Consider being directly behind the football. The illumination is the same but your view is that the football is eclipsing the torch.
Cat
Yes indeed the football would eclipse the torch but I cannot see the torch. If I then move slightly I will be able to see the torch and the straight line between them would also be seen.
Catastrophe
"Science begets knowledge, opinion ignorance.
I am not an unintelligent person but, sadly, I am totally at a loss to understand what point you are trying to make. Sorry <exit>
Catastrophe
"Science begets knowledge, opinion ignorance.
The straight line cannot be "seen". It is imaginary. It exists only in the mind. So what is the importance of an imaginary line which, itself, cannot be observed. This imaginary line is the precursor of an illumination. Nothing else. It exists only in connection with a supposed illumination. If you move slightly you will see the faintest crescent of the illuminated face of the sphere (football), but that does not alter the fact that there are an infinity of perspectives from "eclipse" to "full moon" depending on the location of the observer.
Good luck in experiencing logic.
Cat
The problem is that it is counter-intuitive to logic that the alignment you noticed would ever appear skewed. The Sun's great distance of ~ 93 million miles is the cause of the problem.
The ancient Greeks and others thereafter have attempted to calculate the distance to the Sun based on the angle of the illuminated Moon to the Sun, especially during quarter phase. But they were unable to get an exact angle where a tiny error will produce a huge distance error. Nevertheless, they determined that Sun was at least 20x the distance to the Moon, IIRC.
With respect the distance of the sun makes no difference - the torch could 20 miles away but that wouldn't change the direction of illumination.
LOL I assumed that you would be clever enough to know that I did not intend that the 'line' was a real line but simply an imaginary line of the direction of the light- a vector perhaps?The straight line cannot be "seen". It is imaginary. It exists only in the mind. So what is the importance of an imaginary line which, itself, cannot be observed. This imaginary line is the precursor of an illumination. Nothing else. It exists only in connection with a supposed illumination. If you move slightly you will see the faintest crescent of the illuminated face of the sphere (football), but that does not alter the fact that there are an infinity of perspectives from "eclipse" to "full moon" depending on the location of the observer.
Good luck in experiencing logic.
Cat
I forgot to ask - how do I insert a drawing to show what I mean? I was trying to avoid this but it looks like I will have to.
Wolfshadw
Moderator
You need to use a third party image hosting site like imgur.com. Post your image there (free) and then post the link here.
-Wolf sends
Wolfshadw
Moderator
Behave people. Keep things ON topic if you cannot provide useful information, exit the thread. If you do not understand a question, ask for clarification.
Wolfshadw
Moderator.
Wolfshadw
Moderator.
FYI, this is *entertaining* I think. Some should check out videos of flat earth sun and moon angles, a common argument used to promote flat earth *science*, something that may be at the center of post #1 and almost clearly identified in post #15 (20 miles away for the torch).
I think that I am touching a nerve here! This is not the kind of comment I would expect from this kind of forum. My question was simple.
Now I will ask it in a different way. If I show you a photo of an illuminated football would you be able to determine from which direction it was being illuminated - above, below, left, right, angle given a datum to work from etc etc? Its a pretty basic question.
This diagram does not look right. The illumination of the two moons in orbit do not reflect the correct angle of reflection according to the position of the sun. see my modified drawing.https://www.dropbox.com/s/kzf14pjp2tk5ars/Drawing 3.jpg?dl=0Perhaps this will help the discussion.
Yes, the angle I show is exaggerated for effect. Notice that I said I was attempting to help the discussion, and I didn't offer it as an explanation. I have yet to think of a way to demonstrate it properly.
There is no question, however, that what you see as an angular discrepancy in the Sun's position relative to the direction the illuminated face of a crescent moon is pointing is an illusion (point direction). The only time it's not is during quarter phase, as I have drawn it.
We would expect that the parallel rays from the Sun would always give us the illuminated horns to be perpendicular to the Sun, but that's clearly not what we see, except at quarter phase.
Can you tell by just the photo? No. Not unless you can also determine the angle between the football and the ground. You need something else to use as a reference.
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