2009/04/13

Reflection Entry #2

I tried to see the moon four times the past week and I was successful in the half of my tries. The moon was very round and visible, we say “full”. I was taking photos and I realized that, from a photographer’s point of view, it is very difficult to capture the texture of the moon in night. Yes, I have a few nice examples from Norway, but they were taken during the summer 2008 far up north, meaning that the sun was present on the sky to. Thus, I did not have to work with relatively long exposures back then. The long exposure leads to lit surroundings; the moon, however, becomes one shiny object on the night sky. And these days, I did not encounter the moon being in the presence of the sun and so I was forced to take my tripod out. Even when I tried to capture HDR photos, I could not perfect my intentions since the moon was constantly moving. Those few minutes were always enough to clearly see that the moon’s trajectory was up towards the west and then north. I had to make a decision – either I could observe the path of the moon precisely, or I could observe the texture of the moon in high details. I chose to do the first. But still, I took photos of the texture too so I can refer to them later. It would have been a shame not to have documentation from the only full moon we could have seen during our month long project. I guess I will use that later.

My discoveries of the moon’s trajectory were a bit surprising. Once again, my knowledge about the sun made me to expect the moon behaving in a similar way. But while the sun has a constant point of rising and a point setting, the moon seems not to. From my window and so from a specific observation point, I noticed that one day the moon was at a certain time above the Axinn. But the next day, approximately at the same time (plus minus 5 min), the moon was more towards east on the night sky. I drew a few sketches and estimated the angle to be 15°. I shall continue observing the moon so that I can find out the exact angle of change: if the moon moves around the night sky one time and is on the same position (during a specific time) after “x”days, then the angle it has been changing is (360°/x)°.

To conclude, I am sure that the moon moves clockwise on the night sky in an arc (rising up, reaching its maximum point, and going down). By clockwise I mean the rotation through an imaginary horizontal north-south & east-west direction plane of an observer. Similarly, the point of rising moves anticlockwise (north, east, south, west, north, etc.) on such plane, defining a new point of moon setting each time. That is, with all respect to my previous knowledge, unexpectable. It seems that the empirical way of learning has its valid points – observation over the time reaching valid conclusions replaces assumptions that are made quickly and want to be (incorrectly called) conclusions.

My current dorm: Starr Hall, Middlebury College, VT, USA

2009/04/06

Reflection Entry #1

I looked for the moon constantly during the past week. I was successfully only once out of 5 times though. It was on my first day of observations – the Thursday. I did not really plan to see the moon that day, but I happened to cross its path more than one time. Therefore I noted down its position and relative height to the surroundings. Having been studying architecture, I apparently know about the sun´s trajectory (rise at 120° East from South & sets at 120° West from South). I stood still, however, when I found out that I am unsure about the trajectory of the moon. Therefore, I want to try investigating about the moon´s exact path on the night sky.

Not seeing moon for 4 nights in a row made me to retrospect. I already know that the moon´s summer path is lower than the winter one. Thus, it should seem that the moon is getting a bit lower as we are approaching the spring time. Furthermore, I know that the moon changes its phases depending on its relative position to the Sun from the Earth´s point of view. Such different positions cause seemingly various shapes of the moon on the night sky watched from the Earth. In order to keep track with the phases of the moon (full, waxing gibbous, first quarter, waxing crescent, new, waning crescent, third quarter, waning gibbous), I searched and printed out a calendar that shows all phases for the year 2009. That made me laughing because I realized that the literal translation of a “month” from Slovak language (“mesiac”) to English is a “moon”. Linguistically speaking, Slovak language has only one word for a month and a moon (“mesiac”). I guess that the reason is dated centuries back when our ancestors made a solar and lunar calendar depending on the sky objects´ positions.

Furthermore, I made a small visual project of my past experiences with the moon. I finally joined 3 photos from August 18, 2008 into an HDR picture showing the moon´s pattern. Also, I let my fantasy to be blown away and I further explored the moon´s surface.

Kamoyvaer near Nordkapp, Norway - the northernmost inland point of Europe