Moon 21st November 2018

A full moon! Bright and shiny!
But 12 hours later, it's a murky morning; is that sphere the Moon or the Sun?
Of course, being 12 hours later and the same place in the sky it cannot be the Moon!

Time 20:15.
Distance 234,978 miles.
Waxing gibbous phase.
130 degrees SE compass point (azimuth).
Altitude 37.4 degrees.

Arecibo Moon (late!)

Really nice photo but...

...a day too late for the Arecibo Message 44th Anniversary!

By this time, 44 years ago, the message would have been 16.1 billion miles past the Moon! Yikes!

But it would still have had about 147,000 trillion miles to go!

I created a song to celebrate it.
https://soundcloud.com/samsswingnskank/arecibo-sound
(Full info on my other blog: http://samsswingnskank.blogspot.com/2018/11/arecibo-sound.html)

Time 18:30.
Distance 249,419 miles.
Waxing gibbous phase.
170 degrees S compass point (azimuth).
Altitude 24.3 degrees.

Moon 11th November 2018

It's not only Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day on the same day, but the Moon is exactly the same phase as it was 100 years ago!

There's a very bright star to the bottom right of the moon, but I'm not sure what it is as I only have a hand-held planisphere! There are a few possibilities but I think it might be Altair in the Aquila constellation - the 12th brightest star in the sky. From the Arabic for "the flying eagle", Altair isn't spherical, but flattened at the poles because it rotates very rapidly (286 km/s at the equator!).

Here are the Moon details:
Time 17:15.
Distance 247,883 miles.
Waxing crescent phase.
210 degrees SW compass point (azimuth).
Altitude 10.8 degrees.

Compare that with the results from 100 years ago at the same time:
Time 17:15.
Distance 234,773 miles.
Waxing crescent phase.
165 degrees S compass point (azimuth).
Altitude 25.0 degrees.

Moon 30th October 2018

No visible Moon on Halloween because of the weather, but here's the Halloween Eve Moon!

On the northern horn of the terminator lies Anaxagoras, named after Greek philosopher Anaxagoras.

It's an impact crater made of anorthosite, an igneous rock.
Most Earth anorthosites formed during Precambrian times and it contains titanium-bearing ilmenite which is used by steelworkers in blast furnaces.

The crater is 32.25 miles across. Imagine if the meteorite that it had hit Dudley instead it would have formed a crater from Brignorth to the NEC!

Time 23:30.
Distance 230,436 miles.
Waning gibbous phase.
80 degrees E compass point (azimuth).
Altitude 15.1 degrees.