Moon

It's indeed a full moon tonight: the kids are completely insane...

The full moon occurred this morning at precisely 9:27:18 am (GMT). In Manchester, it will rise in the east at 7:12pm tonight and set in the west at 5:32am tomorrow morning. It will be at its highest at midnight when it will be due south.

I didn't hear anything.

You don't hear lunar eclipses

yeah it's cool according to pictures

i took some piccies the night my dad died on my way home but you can't see much

heh

I managed to take a photo of the moon in Crete one evening without much difficulty. I remember using a shutter speed of 1/1000th second. But last night I couldn't get it in focus, I don't know why.

I saw it last night as I left work. It did look large and bright!

It's a sort of optical illusion that the moon looks larger when it's near the horizon. The moon's orbit does move it closer and further away from the earth, resulting in an apparent size change of about 14% maximum, but often when people say they've seen a 'huge moon' it's at a time when the moon is really at its apparent smallest.

People overestimate how big the moon (and sun which happens to look about the same size) look in the sky. When you tell people that the smallest coin, held at arms length, is big enough to cover the moon, they don't believe you - but try it for yourself and you'll see that it's true. Try it on the moon though, not the sun, as looking directly at the sun, even just briefly by accident, is bad for your eyes.

It's interesting that the moon and sun appear the same size - and this is why solar eclipses are so pretty here on earth. This doesn't happen anywhere else in the solar system. The sun is about four hundred times bigger than the moon, but it's also four hundred times as far away, so the apparent sizes are pretty much identical. The moon is gradually moving further away from the earth though, so a billion years from now there will no longer be any total solar eclipses, as by then the moon will appear too small to totally cover the sun.

Will the earth still exist in a billion years? How much longer is it estimated to have?

The earth's about four and a half billion years old and so is the sun.

The sun has burnt up getting on for half its total energy reserves now. As it begins to run out of fuel it will swell to giant size. Mercury and Venus, which are closer to the sun than the earth will be totally engulfed inside the swollen sun and vaporized. Scientists aren't sure whether or not the sun will swell enough to also vaporize the earth - but it's a close thing and the earth will certainly be fried if not completely destroyed. All its atmosphere and oceans will burn away and the surface rocks will at least be molten.

But this won't happen for another three billion years or more, so unless some unforeseen disaster occurs first, the earth and moon will still be here in a billion years time. I suppose it's very doubtful that humans will still be around by then.

*opens diary and makes note for one billion years from today*

Oh bollocks. That's when the council are coming to fix the boiler.