08/09/11 – Ephemeris – The moon tonight – musings
Tuesday, August 9th. The sun rises at 6:37. It’ll be up for 14 hours and 19 minutes, setting at 8:57. The moon, 3 days past first quarter, will set at 3:19 tomorrow morning.
The moon tonight is in its gibbous phase, as it has been since first quarter last weekend. This Saturday it will be full. So now most of the moon’s face is in sunlight. Besides the dark, lava filled dry seas of the moon, which give us the dark spots that some of us imagine as the face of the man in the moon, we can spot many craters and other formations in a telescope. Even as the moon has been accumulating spacecraft, rocket parts, rovers and Hasselblad cameras for the last 50 years none can be seen from the earth. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is taking photographs of the moon in unprecedented detail. They’ve already located the Apollo landing sites, and discovered a lost Soviet lunar rover. Who knows what else they’ll find.
* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
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