Blame it on the moon
Tuesday's event is a good time to indulge in a little lunar lust
By DEBRA McKINNEY
Anchorage Daily News
Published: November 14, 2005
Last Modified: November 14, 2005 at 06:16 AM
As the Earth's constant celestial companion -- rumored to have a dark side that it categorically denies -- the moon gets blamed for everything, from natural disasters to the fathering of children.
The moon doesn't mean to be a trouble- maker. All it really wants is to dance around us at the dizzying average pace of 2,287 mph, three times the speed of a .22-caliber bullet. And maybe mess with our tides (with a little help from the sun).
With a full moon rising Tuesday, meaning Earth will be lined up between the moon and the sun, a setup for maximum reflection of light, now is as good a time as any to indulge in a little stream-of-consciousness moon lust.
In ancient times, the moon was seen as the Earth's gated community, a place off- limits to mortals, where the gods resided and the souls of the dead could rest. The moon also explained the unexplainable, from madness to the origins of the universe.
The invention of the telescope in 1608 gave early scientists a little closer view. As scopes got stronger, they could see the moon was pockmarked with craters. In addition to craters, the biggest 184 miles in diameter, the moon has volcanoes and mountain ranges up to 8,000 feet high, lava fields and other features that can be detected these days with an ordinary pair of binoculars by those who know what they're looking for.
The moon was first visited by the Soviet spacecraft Luna 2 in 1959 and first walked upon by us in 1969. Now that we've been there and taken a look around, we know a lot more. Besides the lunar landscape being really gray and dusty, we now know things about the moon most of us can't pronounce.
It turns out nobody lives there, neither gods nor ghosts. So Wal-Mart's not interested.
Still, there's land up there for sale. Nice views. Very quiet. Lots of free parking. And no zoning whatsoever.
An Alaskan's dream.
At the moment there's a special deal on acreage on the northwest side of the Sea of Tranquility, where Apollo 11 landed, near the Crater Arago. No oxygen, but what do you expect for $29.99 an acre?
Seriously. Your "potential prudent investment," or slice of green cheese, comes with a certificate suitable for framing. Check it out at
www.lunarlandowner.com.
In 1835, the New York Sun reported life on the moon. The story told how English astronomer Sir John Herschel, using a super-powerful telescope that could magnify 42,000 times, was able to make out all kinds of life forms up there -- 16 species of animals, 38 species of trees, 76 species of plants. Oh, and batlike humanoids with yellow skin and wings.
And this was way, way, way before acid.
A gang of Yale University professors forced the reporter to fess up to the hoax. But not before 60,000 copies of the article, printed as a pamphlet, sold out and a pumped-up preacher talked of selling Bibles on the moon.
The reporter resigned in disgrace but no doubt went on to make it big with his own reality show. You can read more about it at starryskies.com/The_sky/events/lunar-2003/moon.newyork.html. It's worth it.
LUNAR BADNESS
Time for fun moon facts.
The moon is 2,160 miles in diameter, 27 percent the size of the Earth, its surface area about that of the continent of Africa. As previously mentioned, its speedometer reading in orbit, relative to Earth (the moon is elliptical in shape rather than spherical), is an average 2,287 mph. It takes the moon 27 days, 7 hours, 43 minutes and 11.5 seconds to do one lap, all the while rotating on its axis, making one pirouette every 27.32 days.
Now that that's out of the way, we can go back to the really important stuff. Like werewolves.
We're pretty sure no creature changes from human to wolf on account of the moon. That only happens during Fur Rondy when guys wear those spooky dead-animal hats.
Which brings us to bad behavior.
Especially during the pipeline days, Glenn Shaw, now professor emeritus at the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, expected strange calls around full moon time, especially if those moons fell on a Friday night.
"Squirrel-food calls," he and his colleagues would call them. "Nuts." The ones he ended up with always seemed to come from places like Tommy's Elbow Room.
Guys on domestic beer would be arguing and making bets with their buddies; they'd call the university, and the switchboard would forward them to Shaw.
" 'Is this a per-fessor?' they'd want to know."
Then they'd ask if it was true there are more murders when the moon is full.
"Yeah," Shaw would tell them. "Watch your back."
After having some fun, he would set them straight.
No. Not true. There's no statistical evidence linking the moon to any kind of bad behavior.
Even so, you wouldn't believe the things blamed on the full moon. Women going into labor. An increase in traffic accidents, domestic violence, murders and suicides.
Sleepwalking, too. And casino payouts, aggression by professional hockey players, agitated behavior by nursing home residents. It goes on and on.
All of these have been checked out. Sorry. No full-moon defense.
Full-moon madness is one of those myths that's hard to shake.
"Well, you know the word lunatic comes from the word for moon," Shaw said. "Lunatic" is from the Latin word "luna." But it was the ancient Greeks who gave the word the bad rap. They thought madness was caused by excess moisture in the brain. Since the moon affects the tides, it made sense it would also tug on a soggy brain.
A MOON IS BORN
Several theories have waxed and waned on how the moon was born, including the cool sounding "Nebular Hypothesis," that says the moon and the planets formed from immense rotating and condensing clouds of gas.
Or that it started out smaller but snowballed bigger and bigger as it accumulated debris from space.
Or that while the Earth was spinning at high speed, it winged a piece of itself right out into space like a toddler flying off a merry-go-round.
Or that it came wandering in from elsewhere in the solar system and was snagged and held captive by gravitational forces.
The current theory involves cataclysmic collision, which ranks way higher on the special- effects scale than any of the above.
Travis Rector, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Alaska Anchorage, explained it this way -- in Muffy terms, by request.
"The accepted theory now is that a massive meteor hit the Earth when it was very young, a piece broke off and formed the moon," he said. "And the evidence for this is substantial. For example, the composition of moon rocks is very similar to rocks on Earth. A rock from Mars has a significantly different composition."
The portion that broke off was massive enough that its own gravity was able to compact it into a sphere, Rector explained. He also pointed out that we should be impressed with the size of our moon, which has about a quarter the diameter of the Earth.
"If you compare it to other planets in the solar system, if they have a moon at all they're very small in comparison."
Ours is bigger!
FULL MOON RISING
Now that we're so much better informed, it will be easier to appreciate Tuesday's full moon.
Too bad the best moon viewing isn't when the moon is full.
"It really depends on what you want to see," Rector said.
"It's very bright," said amateur astronomer Joe Wolner of Girdwood. "It will definitely knock your night vision right out."
Wolner is the more or less founder of the more or less astronomy club Chugach Stargazers Society, which he hesitates to even call a club.
The local astronomy community does get together now and then, with members offering public talks on a variety of topics. Mostly, it's pretty informal, though.
"Occasionally on a really clear night somebody will say, 'Hey, let's meet up at Flattop,' and we'll drag our telescopes there and set them up," Wolner said.
To view a full moon through a telescope you really need a neutral-density moon filter, he said.
During a full moon, the best show is those bright rays emanating like giant spokes from certain craters.
Rector explains:
"The rays are debris ejected from the impacts of meteors on the moon's surface. In addition to producing craters, they throw out debris in streaks that are called rays.
"They are best seen during the full moon because the sun is overhead (on the surface) of the moon, making it easier to see subtle differences in the brightness of the ejected material relative to the rest of the moon's surface."
If it's craters and other landscape forms you want to see, the best time for that is during the first and third quarter of the moon, he said.
"During the quarter phases, the sun is low on the surface of the moon, causing shadows to highlight mountains and craters more."
But really? The best time for moon viewing?
"When it's warm out," he said.