As we’re right around the full (super!) moon this weekend (and I’m knee-deep in tech and tax stuff, super fun), here’s a composite image of the moon with amazing detail.
The self-taught Kurdish astrophotographer amassed 81,000 images, which he stitched into a 708-gigabyte composite revealing the intricacies of the lunar topography in stunningly high resolution.
Scroll down through the images to be impressed by the work of this self-taught astrophotographer.
The best times to view the event will depend on your location, but the lunar eclipse will peak at 10:44 p.m. ET, according to NASA. All of North and South America will have a chance to see the partial lunar eclipse and harvest supermoon depending on the weather. Europe and Africa will also have an opportunity to see the eclipse.
As the full Moon closest to the autumnal equinox, this is the Harvest Moon. The first known written use of this name in the English language (per the Oxford English Dictionary) was in 1706. During the fall harvest season farmers sometimes need to work late into the night by moonlight. On average moonrise is about 50 minutes later each night. Around the Harvest Moon this time is shorter, about 25 minutes for the latitude of Washington, DC, and only 10 to 20 minutes farther north in Canada and Europe.
Here is some general info on eclipses and a fun video from NASA.
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And as for that more-or-less moon related bonus item? It’s a tasty one.
Mr Man and I went for a lovely if hot hike down by the river, and decided that the best way to cap it off would be with ice cream. We found ourselves at Chris’s Ice Cream Ottawa.
This fun little shop had a number of interesting and creative flavors, including blood orange, chili chocolate, strawberry crunch, and… hang on, what’s this?
I did not think I would like it. I did not think the flavors would work. In fact, they did more than work, as all three flavors combined into a new, better flavor.
I don’t quite know how to describe this “improbable” combination except as a structural shift. Imagine three individual flavors, normally experienced as if they were sequential, or side by side. When eaten together, however, the flavors stack together to create a singular new experience.
To supplement my previous post on the progress we’ve made imaging the far side of the Moon, here are a number of snapshots from the Artemis I Orion flyby.
I am working on story edits today and found myself needing to look up a lunar technicality. Next thing I know, I was reading a detailed account of the first lunar spacewalk at Tranquillity Base. I thought you might enjoy it too.
July 20, 1969: The day began on the farside of the Moon. Armstrong, Aldrin and crewmate Mike Collins flew their spaceship 60 miles above the cratered wasteland. No one on Earth can see the Moon’s farside. Even today it remains a land of considerable mystery, but the astronauts had no time for sight-seeing. Collins pressed a button, activating a set of springs, and the spaceship split in two. The half named Columbia, with Collins on board, would remain in orbit. The other half, the Eagle, spiraled over the horizon toward the Sea of Tranquillity.
“You are Go for powered descent,” Houston radioed…
This also got me thinking about the farside of the moon. We’ve learned a lot about it since these images in 1959:
Orion entered a distant lunar orbit on at 4:52 p.m. EST Friday, Nov. 25, where the spacecraft will remain for about a week to test systems in a deep space environment about 40,000 miles above the lunar surface before beginning the journey back to Earth.
The Artemis moon mission is now underway, which means fun updates like this video flyby of the Moon.
… NASA’s Orion spacecraft performs a close approach of the lunar surface on its way to a distant retrograde orbit, a highly stable orbit thousands of miles beyond the Moon. During the Artemis I flight test, launched on Nov. 16, Orion will travel 280,000 miles (450,000 km) from Earth and 40,000 miles (64,000 km) beyond the far side of the Moon, carrying science and technology payloads to expand our understanding of lunar science, technology developments, and deep space radiation.
I forgot to mention yesterday’s Super Flower Blood Moon eclipse. Hopefully you saw at least some of it, but if you missed it NASA has a number of livestreams, including this one from Georgia in the US:
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