MOON ENLIGHTENMENT
1. I like to try to see image of the face of a moon on the moon. Note the following two photos and see if you can make out the face of a woman on the moon, the next time you see a full moon. Every time I see our moon on TV, I look for the face of this woman.
Note above the Apollo landing sites so after you help a family/friend see the woman's face; point out that Apollo 14 landed on her chin; Apollo 12 just missed her chin (to left of 14); Apollo 11 landed just above her ear (in her hair) and Apollo 16 just below her ear; Apollo 16 landed high on her forehead and Apollo 17 bopped her right in the center of her head (it's good that her thick her cushioned their landing. Hehehe).
Now, you'll never look at the Moon again without seeing the face of the woman.
Now, you'll never look at the Moon again without seeing the face of the woman.
2. When will the first woman walk on the moon?
The mission — nicknamed “Artemis” after the twin sister of mythological Greek god and spacecraft namesake Apollo — seeks put a man and woman on the lunar surface by 2024 and establish a lunar outpost with a “sustained human presence on and around the Moon by 2028,” according to information from the space agency.
3. How do you, Mr. Paul, know that we've landed on the Moon and it's not a lie?
1. Moon rock returned to Earth show microscopic sand-blasting due to the Moon having no atmosphere so the moon is constantly being sand-blasted by microscopic meteors. This type of sandblasting cannot be duplicated on Earth due to our atmosphere causing them to burn up as shooting stars.
The best three proofs that I can think of, right off hand, are:
1. Back when I taught Astronomy for 37 semesters, with up to 300 high school Junior & Seniors taking my Astronomy class per year at Stevens Point Area Senior High (SPASH) in central Wisconsin, I had a license to obtain real Moon rock and soil samples brought back from the Moon, to show SPASH students & staff.
The Moon rocks when looked at by Geologists under high magnification show how the rock had been sandblasted with microscopic meteors. That can not happen on Earth as our atmosphere causes meteors to burn up entering our atmosphere (we call them shooting stars and those that are the size of a grain of sand, actually, look like fireballs as E=mc squared so just a grain of sand converted to energy is a whole lot of light. Michael and I witnessed the largest fireball I've ever seen at the end of our Stargazers session in March.
Note the photo below of the footprint on the Moon. The reason the footprint could be made and is still present on the moon is that the moon has no atmosphere. On Earth we have meteor showers all the time and our atmosphere causes the microscopic sand to burn up as they enter our atmosphere (like our Apollo craft needed heat shields to protect their re-entry.) Whereas, our Moon has no atmosphere, so the surface is constantly being sand-blasted making for the regolith (powder), thus the footprints and the Astronaut running his fingers thru the regolith (fine powder). Because of future man's presence on the moon, they were trying to make the past landing sites National Parks so the footprints are not disturbed; but failed in their efforts. Note photos below.
1. Back when I taught Astronomy for 37 semesters, with up to 300 high school Junior & Seniors taking my Astronomy class per year at Stevens Point Area Senior High (SPASH) in central Wisconsin, I had a license to obtain real Moon rock and soil samples brought back from the Moon, to show SPASH students & staff.
The Moon rocks when looked at by Geologists under high magnification show how the rock had been sandblasted with microscopic meteors. That can not happen on Earth as our atmosphere causes meteors to burn up entering our atmosphere (we call them shooting stars and those that are the size of a grain of sand, actually, look like fireballs as E=mc squared so just a grain of sand converted to energy is a whole lot of light. Michael and I witnessed the largest fireball I've ever seen at the end of our Stargazers session in March.
Note the photo below of the footprint on the Moon. The reason the footprint could be made and is still present on the moon is that the moon has no atmosphere. On Earth we have meteor showers all the time and our atmosphere causes the microscopic sand to burn up as they enter our atmosphere (like our Apollo craft needed heat shields to protect their re-entry.) Whereas, our Moon has no atmosphere, so the surface is constantly being sand-blasted making for the regolith (powder), thus the footprints and the Astronaut running his fingers thru the regolith (fine powder). Because of future man's presence on the moon, they were trying to make the past landing sites National Parks so the footprints are not disturbed; but failed in their efforts. Note photos below.
My wife's best high schools friends father; helped design the tires for the Moon rover vehicle above.
2. Another proof of our Moon landing is the mirror left on the moon so we could reflect a laser light off the mirror, in order to calculate the distance of the moon currently, within a few meters of accuracy.
Among those experiment packages were a laser reflector and a seismograph. Fifty years later, this laser reflector is still used to measure the distance from Earth to the moon.
My wife and I had a good friend, Phil Reinke, that told us that when he was in College; one Physics experiment his class had to do was to go up on the roof of their science building and reflect a laser light off the above mirror and do this experiment of figuring out the distance of the moon by timing how long it took their laser pulse to get to the moon and return back to them on the roof, as they knew that their laser light moved at the speed of light and distance = velocity times time.
My wife and I had a good friend, Phil Reinke, that told us that when he was in College; one Physics experiment his class had to do was to go up on the roof of their science building and reflect a laser light off the above mirror and do this experiment of figuring out the distance of the moon by timing how long it took their laser pulse to get to the moon and return back to them on the roof, as they knew that their laser light moved at the speed of light and distance = velocity times time.
3. Another proof that we were on the moon is that orbiting moon satellites have taken photos, again, of the Apollo landing sites. Note photo below.
What Does The Apollo 11 Moon Landing Site Look Like Today?Forty-five years ago yesterday, the Sea of Tranquility saw a brief flurry of activity when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin dared to disturb the ancient lunar dust. Now the site has lain quiet, untouched, for almost half a century. Are any traces of the astronauts still visible?The answer is yes! Look at the picture above of the site taken in 2012, two years ago. Because erosion is a very gradual process on the moon — it generally takes millions of years for meteors and the sun’s activity to weather features away — the footprints of the Apollo 11 crew have a semi-immortality. That’s also true of the other five crews that made it to the moon’s surface.
In honor of the big anniversary, here are a few of NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s pictures of the landing sites of Apollo 11, Apollo 12, Apollo 14, Apollo 15, Apollo 16 and Apollo 17. (Apollo 13 was slated to land on the moon, but that was called off after an explosion in its service module.)
In honor of the big anniversary, here are a few of NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s pictures of the landing sites of Apollo 11, Apollo 12, Apollo 14, Apollo 15, Apollo 16 and Apollo 17. (Apollo 13 was slated to land on the moon, but that was called off after an explosion in its service module.)
4. Does the Moon rotate on its axis like the Earth does?
Here's a fun and easy way to show that the Moon spins on it's axis.
Kinesthetics (using one's body to understand to represent things)
To demonstrate to someone else that the moon rotates on its axis:
1). Tell your friend that you'll represent the Earth and they'll represent the Moon and have them walk around you (the Earth) by first facing the same wall as they walk around you. If they face the same direction the whole time that they walk around you; that simulates IF the moon did NOT rotate on it's axis and note that you'd see the sides and back of your friend while they walk around you AND we know that the same side of the moon always faces us so to see the back side of the moon; we need to fly to the far side and look at it from the space ship.
2). Now have your friend (the moon) always face you (the earth) as they walk around you. Your friend will notice that they have to turn as they walk around you so the Moon has to spin on it's axis in order for you (the earth) always to see the same side of them.
Note: This is not unusual as many moons of other planets also have the same side of their moon facing the planet.
Kinesthetics (using one's body to understand to represent things)
To demonstrate to someone else that the moon rotates on its axis:
1). Tell your friend that you'll represent the Earth and they'll represent the Moon and have them walk around you (the Earth) by first facing the same wall as they walk around you. If they face the same direction the whole time that they walk around you; that simulates IF the moon did NOT rotate on it's axis and note that you'd see the sides and back of your friend while they walk around you AND we know that the same side of the moon always faces us so to see the back side of the moon; we need to fly to the far side and look at it from the space ship.
2). Now have your friend (the moon) always face you (the earth) as they walk around you. Your friend will notice that they have to turn as they walk around you so the Moon has to spin on it's axis in order for you (the earth) always to see the same side of them.
Note: This is not unusual as many moons of other planets also have the same side of their moon facing the planet.
5. Harvest Moon; one time I saw the Moon and it was huge; you said both the Moon & the Sun are the same size (take up a half degree in the sky) and yet I'd swear the Moon was much larger that day at dusk then I've ever seen it; why was the Moon so much larger that day?
Moon size story #1:
To aid my students in understanding this optical illusion of our moon appearing so much larger sometimes than others; we took the time to experience the reason with our bodies (kinesthetically).
First I'd asked which students were not afraid of heights and choose anywhere from three to eight of them to go with me, high above the other students in our schools field house.
This exercise took some pre-setup as I needed to get permission from the administration, special keys, and two basketballs the same size from the athletic department while I let the entire department know what I was up to that day.
Then I had most of the class just enter the field house while I took the brave ones, through both boys locker rooms (yelling girls present and coming), to a special door that went up a full flight of steps to first the store room for much of the athletic gear (like all the football uniform shoulder pads, helmets, etc.); then through a very long room with vents and finally out a door and onto a cat walk where we had to climb another long flight of steps to a cat walk that ran the entire width of the field house. When we got up there, we were 30+ feet above the classmates underneath us. We had one basketball to represent a moon high in the sky and they had the other basketball of the same size, that would represent a moon horizontal on the horizon from them.
Then I lowered a rope down to a student below, to measure our height above them and the students watched me tie a knot at our height above the student holding the other end below. After dropping the rope, with the knot marking the height we were, I had two more volunteers below walk away from the rest of the class the same distance we were high on the cat walk near the ceiling of the field house. One student carried the rope with the knot end, while the 2nd carried the basket ball.
Now, I had one of the students with me hold out our bright orange basketball at the height I measured to put the knot and horizontally from them the 2nd student held a same size basketball, horizontally at most of their eye height.
When I asked the class to look up at our basketball above them and horizontally at a basketball the same size and the exact same distance from them and tell me which one looked much bigger than the other; all the students (usually 25+ students under us) agreed that the basketball horizontally from them looked much bigger than the one the same distance above them.
This optical illusion is a well known one by magicians and I was told by scientists that do experiments in micro-gravity that this phenomena is actually part of our cell makeup, that vertical objects always look smaller than objects the same size horizontally to us. I'm guessing that it has aided in human survival throughout history.
Story #2: Knowing that the huge moon on the horizon is an optical illusion, I do these other two simple experiments with my students during a night observation session.
First, when we arrive and the huge looking moon is horizontal from us, near the horizon and rising (or setting for this first one) I have them hold their pointer finger (index finger) out at arms length and block off that huge moon with their index finger easily; as I know that one's index finger at arms length, blocks a full degree of the sky and the sun and moon are only a half degree so their finger would actually block two of those huge looking moons sitting next to each other. The second experiment (if it's evening and the huge moon is rising higher in the sky) just before we leave around midnight (when that same huge moon, we saw earlier that evening is directly overhead) I have the same students look at the very small looking same moon directly above us.
It'll all an illusion.
To aid my students in understanding this optical illusion of our moon appearing so much larger sometimes than others; we took the time to experience the reason with our bodies (kinesthetically).
First I'd asked which students were not afraid of heights and choose anywhere from three to eight of them to go with me, high above the other students in our schools field house.
This exercise took some pre-setup as I needed to get permission from the administration, special keys, and two basketballs the same size from the athletic department while I let the entire department know what I was up to that day.
Then I had most of the class just enter the field house while I took the brave ones, through both boys locker rooms (yelling girls present and coming), to a special door that went up a full flight of steps to first the store room for much of the athletic gear (like all the football uniform shoulder pads, helmets, etc.); then through a very long room with vents and finally out a door and onto a cat walk where we had to climb another long flight of steps to a cat walk that ran the entire width of the field house. When we got up there, we were 30+ feet above the classmates underneath us. We had one basketball to represent a moon high in the sky and they had the other basketball of the same size, that would represent a moon horizontal on the horizon from them.
Then I lowered a rope down to a student below, to measure our height above them and the students watched me tie a knot at our height above the student holding the other end below. After dropping the rope, with the knot marking the height we were, I had two more volunteers below walk away from the rest of the class the same distance we were high on the cat walk near the ceiling of the field house. One student carried the rope with the knot end, while the 2nd carried the basket ball.
Now, I had one of the students with me hold out our bright orange basketball at the height I measured to put the knot and horizontally from them the 2nd student held a same size basketball, horizontally at most of their eye height.
When I asked the class to look up at our basketball above them and horizontally at a basketball the same size and the exact same distance from them and tell me which one looked much bigger than the other; all the students (usually 25+ students under us) agreed that the basketball horizontally from them looked much bigger than the one the same distance above them.
This optical illusion is a well known one by magicians and I was told by scientists that do experiments in micro-gravity that this phenomena is actually part of our cell makeup, that vertical objects always look smaller than objects the same size horizontally to us. I'm guessing that it has aided in human survival throughout history.
Story #2: Knowing that the huge moon on the horizon is an optical illusion, I do these other two simple experiments with my students during a night observation session.
First, when we arrive and the huge looking moon is horizontal from us, near the horizon and rising (or setting for this first one) I have them hold their pointer finger (index finger) out at arms length and block off that huge moon with their index finger easily; as I know that one's index finger at arms length, blocks a full degree of the sky and the sun and moon are only a half degree so their finger would actually block two of those huge looking moons sitting next to each other. The second experiment (if it's evening and the huge moon is rising higher in the sky) just before we leave around midnight (when that same huge moon, we saw earlier that evening is directly overhead) I have the same students look at the very small looking same moon directly above us.
It'll all an illusion.