The Moon, its Light and its Effects

The whole expresses itself within each part. There may be a nature to the expression.

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golly
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The Moon, its Light and its Effects

Post by golly »

Screenshot from 2021-06-05 14-21-09.png
Screenshot from 2021-06-05 14-21-09.png (217.59 KiB) Viewed 912 times
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012 ... pse/100301

The Moon's Disc Fits Neatly into the Sun's Disc in the Sky

There isn't much more to say about this. It's just a reminder that this occurs and it's a pretty amazing coincidence. Now, just how much of a coincidence this is could be rather a long point of discussion. Perhaps if it were "perfect" we would need to see less light on the edge when the Moon is perfectly over the Sun from a given perspective on Earth. If so, we would have to discuss what we mean by "perfect". Is there a natural function that emerges from the Sun's light becoming the Moon's?


The Moon's Light Does Not Reflect the Sun in an Expected Way

This was not written to set out to disprove that the Moon is lit by the light of the Sun. I want to explore just how that light travels from the Sun to the Moon to the Earth, and why it implies room for different interpretations of light; or, if in the case it becomes clear that there are other things at work, to introduce those questions to a debate long since thought settled and over with.

Let's begin with a simple diagram.
moon_perpendicular_to_earth.jpg
moon_perpendicular_to_earth.jpg (5.53 KiB) Viewed 913 times
Here we see the Moon from the surface of Earth during an unspecified time.

It already gets tricky if I ask you: what time of day is this?

Some might answer immediately, "Night" because I have drawn the background black. But look again at the angle of light, and hence what must be the implied angle of sun light.
moon_perpendicular_to_earth_2.jpg
moon_perpendicular_to_earth_2.jpg (16.25 KiB) Viewed 913 times
The illusion or challenge that occurs for me is: does the geometry add up?

If you see the Moon during day light (and it's important for my point that we make our own observations of this — it is a fun and simple thing to look for) you should be able to directly compare the position of the Sun with the angle of lighting of the Moon. And you should find, that the position of the Sun more or less is casting parallel light on a perpendicular relationship between the Moon and Earth. However, what is curious to observe is the Sun when it does not in fact relate to the logical position. Instead of seeing this:
moon_sun_dance_1.jpg
moon_sun_dance_1.jpg (8.48 KiB) Viewed 913 times
We are likely to see this:
moon_sun_dance_2.jpg
moon_sun_dance_2.jpg (9.3 KiB) Viewed 913 times
Which implies a light behavior like this:
moon_sun_dance_3.jpg
moon_sun_dance_3.jpg (12.19 KiB) Viewed 913 times
QED Proof: Evenly broad sun lighting of the Moon is observed not to travel in perfectly straight lines from the Sun to the Moon to our eyes on Earth.

So where is the behavior different from our expectation — is it the light? Just the light of the Sun? Is it curvature of physical atmosphere, curvature of observation, curvature of light itself (and so on)?


EXPLANATIONS WE MIGHT DISMISS

First, let us pause to set up ignorant answers to this 'problem' that we can dismiss outright. This is not to set up a straw man but to show where at least every theorist can hopefully agree — no matter what shape their cosmos is.

This off the cuff, non-official explanation is that the Sun "has already set" when the innermost edge of its corona, or the edge of the Sun's disc itself, touches the horizon. Hence, the argument goes, the Sun is factually much lower than it appears, and it is only the Earth's atmosphere which carries a hologram or mirage of the Sun over the "edge" of a rounded Earth. There are two problems with this explanation from my perspective.

The first, most problematic of problems, if you will, is that this would make the curvature of light to hit the Moon even more extreme of a divergence. (This is possible, but I'll address this elsewhere). So from that argument, the situation is more like this:
moon_sun_dance_4.jpg
moon_sun_dance_4.jpg (15.62 KiB) Viewed 913 times
Again, I do not yet have a problem with this explanation, except that it should then be very apparent we may have some explaining to do, to prove this is the explanation we want to run with.

The second problem is that this behavior of light must necessarily affect both the Sun's light and the Moon's light. Which would imply — by the notion that both the Sun and Moon are equally affected by "magnifying glass" or "fish eye" effect since both our completely outside the Earth's atmosphere — a divergence like this:
moon_sun_dance_5.jpg
moon_sun_dance_5.jpg (17.37 KiB) Viewed 913 times
This, again, is not a particularly bad problem if you can explain the "fish eye" effect adequately, perhaps without using atmosphere as the modifier — but it necessarily must be a fantastic explanation because the distance we can see in any cardinal planar (North, East, South, West) is a couple magnitudes greater than our atmosphere's thickness as it sits above us. Our atmosphere does not go 250km up into the thermosphere, and we do not apparently see any curving effect when looking 250km straight across a channel. Or do we? Is this the same effect that causes the Earth to appear flat, when in fact, it may not be? And if it isn't flat (as we all assume) how much of this curving of light — which I hope we can all agree is occurring — capable of masking other models of the Earth, such as a more or less convex or concave or variant surface? (See my post about Earth's shapes for more on what experiments show about the interesting qualities of our world.)

The second ignorant answer we can hopefully all dismiss has to do with the acute angle of the Moon to the Earth as opposed to the Sun, and that this should cause a viewer from Earth to see a different angle of the Moon, which would cause the illusion of sun light originating from a different angle.

This could be illustrated like so:
moon_perpendicular_to_earth_3.jpg
moon_perpendicular_to_earth_3.jpg (24.83 KiB) Viewed 913 times
Where the faces of the Moon on the right of the illustration indicate what the observer (that giant, stark-white stick person on Blue No. 6 dye colored Earth) might see.

This explanation should hold no water whatsoever due to the fact that the face of the Moon does not change significantly enough. But it cannot even hold a candle to the official NASA numbers for the Earth's, Moon's and Sun's respective distances.
moon_distance_from_sun.jpg
moon_distance_from_sun.jpg (4.15 KiB) Viewed 913 times
Pretty significant distance, right? One would expect the Moon's interesting adherence to the ecliptical compared with the Earth's official "spinning motion" at a wonky angle should result in significant lighting differences between the Earth and Moon, at least from the Earth's perspective.

Maybe not.
moon_perpendicular_.jpg
moon_perpendicular_.jpg (8.89 KiB) Viewed 913 times
That is to illustrate; here is the Earth's distance from the Moon (approximately "60 Earth radii away" as amusingly given by Wikipedia).

There is no position on a round-model Earth, not from either "end" of a West-East dichotomy nor from either "pole", which provides a significant parallax on our observation of the Moon to change the angle of sun light.

The lighting of the Earth must, by official definition, be almost indistinguishably equal to that of the Moon. This means that if you are observing the Moon at any perpendicular to a level plane of observation (level with "gravity" — whew, a whole other discussion!), then you should be able to visualize yourself on the most distant point of the Moon's disc in the sky and imagine the Moon as the Earth; and imagine that the lighting of the Earth must be equivalent. So, is it day or night on Earth, if the rightmost moon image is observed following aforementioned criteria?
moon_perpendicular_to_earth_4.jpg
moon_perpendicular_to_earth_4.jpg (11.31 KiB) Viewed 913 times
ANSWER: Since it should match the lighting of the Moon from bottom to top of its disc, and "you" are presumably positioned at the top of the Earth disc, you should be standing in sunlight from a position where you should be able to observe the Sun.

That is, the "North" (on a missing rightmost blue circle in place of the "?") should match the Moon's "North" in the rightmost circle in the illustration.

Are you not in the light? But you're seeing the "top" of the Moon disc lit? Interesting. Let's talk about it. This could be consistent with an interesting phenomenon I've observed where I was in an airplane observing the Sun over the horizon, yet the mountainous land below was entirely in shade. I could not observe the angle to the entire mountain range that would be needed to cast the entirety in shadow. By official explanation, there should be one; for I could trace with my eyes the places where the mountains ought to be lit from the Sun's light; yet those places were not lit. I guess it was just a "tilty" part of the Earth — everything sloped East away from the Westward setting Sun ... or was I recognizing an interesting effect that helps explain how "bending light" functions on the world's surface? Maybe both?


EARTH, YOU HAVE SUCH INTERESTING CURVES

And not to drop another pile of weirdness in the midst of it all, and possibly from a completely different argument, but let's also talk about the illusion of watching an airplane "climb" the sky seemingly straight upwards, leaving its contrail appearing like a rocket launch as it gets nearer and nearer to our position. Does this not imply a curvature and natural range limit to light's travel rather than a literal curvature of the airplane's path?

This is what we "see" mapped to an official idea of where things might "actually" be. The Earth appears flat but curves suddenly at the horizon. The airplane path is visible on the horizon but sharply arcs when it is just flying straight. The Sun and Moon appear at horizon level when they are actually "beyond" that part of the Earth. It's a really odd kind of behavior of light in total, is it not? But what do these observations actually mean? Can we dismiss any part of this illustration so that it actually makes sense? I feel as though real observation and the official model for things collides in an extraordinarily awkward way, like this:
what_we_see.jpg
what_we_see.jpg (22.58 KiB) Viewed 913 times
moon_sun_dance_6.jpg
moon_sun_dance_6.jpg (34.71 KiB) Viewed 913 times
Please help me figure it out. We can make it so none of us is lost on this matter, can't we?

Surely, it's not like this image I've made below, is it?
moon_sun_dance_7.jpg
moon_sun_dance_7.jpg (12.73 KiB) Viewed 913 times

The Moon's Light is Colder than the Moon's Dark

Another fascinating subject has come up recently in social media spheres where NASA is being questioned. This is largely dominated by Flat Earth believers who sometimes propose very novel ideas for the structure of the world. I think some of them are even posting in good faith, not just trying to discredit legitimate research. The subject in question is how the Moon's light is measured.

It has apparently been measured by amateurs and found to be cooler in radiative properties than the dark part of the Moon. This would seem to indicate to some that the Moon actually gives off its own light. This would be a convenient way to lead the above question about how the Moon is lit: that is, it seems the Moon may light itself up in response to something. Is it following the Sun? Is it a curved path of radiation that causes the Moon to glow where it is being "bombarded" by such?

However, another explanation would be that the Moon actually has properties different from Earth. It actually is warmer in the Sun's light (or whatever light is up there reflecting — haha! — more or less the Sun's position relative to the Moon), however due to "reverse the polarity" science fiction style explanation that actually proves true, it winds up measuring cooler here. Or, to be less generous to unfamiliar fantasy, the Moon is cooler where it glows, but this is due to some effect of a Moon atmosphere or Moon surface. For example, what if light hitting the surface causes a concentration of heat there and so the cool is pushed out from the Moon and covers up the fact that the Moon's surface is hotter in the Sun's radiation?

That just doesn't seem to be what I would expect. I would expect the Moon to be frighteningly cold in its dark and horribly hot in its light. From a human standpoint, I mean. So what is the explanation? Was there a measurement error? We could find out more about this matter and it would perhaps help us better understand our friend the Moon.

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