Fun facts about the moon and the rings of Saturn!
I was just reading about the ice chunks in the rings of Saturn which are now thought to behave more like tiny moons than collections of debris. Which is interesting enough, but what caught my attention was that the ice chunks are like our moon, which makes one rotation for every circuit around the Earth.
I think I knew that, but try and visualize it for a minute. It's not so simple. Wouldn't that mean that people in different parts of the world would see a different face of the moon? Well, obviously the answer is no, although apparently in Australia it would seem to be upside-down. I don't know if I believe that last part but it says so here.
On this site a guy named Cameron Millsom says:
"If you have trouble visualising why this is true - pretend that you are themoon. Find an object like a chair (you will pretend that the chair is theEarth). Now move around the chair so that your body always faces the chair.As you move around - you will have to turn your body so that it faces thechair. You have to turn your body a full rotation every time you do a full circuit of the chair."
Okay, I tried that just now. (One more reason I love what I do is that it affords me the freedom to walk around chairs whilst turning slowly and no one bats an eyelash.) I am almost convinced.
Another astronomy site says the following:
"If this is hard to picture, grab two oranges; one for the Earth and one for the Moon. Let one go around the other, first without any rotation and then letting the "Moon" rotate just once on its axis for every time it goes around the "Earth". See how if the Moon does NOT rotate, then eventually we see all sides? Therefore the Moon does rotate, but it does very slowly: once a month!"
Okay, okay. I believe it now. But this still doesn't explain to me why the moon looks tilted different ways sometimes.
Last night the moon was a beautiful dusty gold fingernail underneath Venus and Jupiter, which have gotten farther apart since the weekend. It feels like Fall now, even though it is still warm. There is a nip in the air and almost no humidity. I love September best of all the months.
I was just reading about the ice chunks in the rings of Saturn which are now thought to behave more like tiny moons than collections of debris. Which is interesting enough, but what caught my attention was that the ice chunks are like our moon, which makes one rotation for every circuit around the Earth.
I think I knew that, but try and visualize it for a minute. It's not so simple. Wouldn't that mean that people in different parts of the world would see a different face of the moon? Well, obviously the answer is no, although apparently in Australia it would seem to be upside-down. I don't know if I believe that last part but it says so here.
On this site a guy named Cameron Millsom says:
"If you have trouble visualising why this is true - pretend that you are themoon. Find an object like a chair (you will pretend that the chair is theEarth). Now move around the chair so that your body always faces the chair.As you move around - you will have to turn your body so that it faces thechair. You have to turn your body a full rotation every time you do a full circuit of the chair."
Okay, I tried that just now. (One more reason I love what I do is that it affords me the freedom to walk around chairs whilst turning slowly and no one bats an eyelash.) I am almost convinced.
Another astronomy site says the following:
"If this is hard to picture, grab two oranges; one for the Earth and one for the Moon. Let one go around the other, first without any rotation and then letting the "Moon" rotate just once on its axis for every time it goes around the "Earth". See how if the Moon does NOT rotate, then eventually we see all sides? Therefore the Moon does rotate, but it does very slowly: once a month!"
Okay, okay. I believe it now. But this still doesn't explain to me why the moon looks tilted different ways sometimes.
Last night the moon was a beautiful dusty gold fingernail underneath Venus and Jupiter, which have gotten farther apart since the weekend. It feels like Fall now, even though it is still warm. There is a nip in the air and almost no humidity. I love September best of all the months.
posted by Joolya at
6:07 PM
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