The moon's perceived size?

talk random
21

Wow. This thread was a very interesting read. WTB Glos’ brain.

22

I’m still sticking with magic as the answer to all questions that require at least 3 paragraphs of explanation…

I’m Down

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There should have been an option “I am”.

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@Fester - wow, that’s ‘too stupid to live’ stupid. :smh:

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If he doesn’t like the idea of using his thumb to compare, or still insists it looks bigger, bend a paper clip so the two ends match the top and bottom of the moon when held at arm’s length. Have him compare the size when it’s at the horizon and when it’s high up in the sky. Difficult to argue with that.

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If you mean on any given night that the moon appears large when near the horizon, there’s some consensus that it’s simply a matter of perception. Here’s a site that explains (really, really brief mentions) of some theories surrounding it:

http://how-come.net/2007/12/18/why-does-the-moon-look-gigantic-rising-on-the-horizon-but-not-nearly-so-large-overhead/#more-19

I remember discussing this very issue in an astronomy course in college. The way we verified (to ourselves) that it was perception was by watching the moon rise one night and holding our thumbnail over/next to the moon, then doing the same when the moon was higher in the southern sky. Both times, the moon appeared the same size compared to our thumbnail.

When you mentioned the elliptical orbit of the moon, that is known as looming. At it’s closest point in orbit, the moon is approximately 7% closer to us then at it’s furthest point, but it’s not something that happens during the course of 1 evening. This is an event where in the fall you might observe the moon looks larger than it did in the summer. Most people never notice this difference.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080617/sc_space/seeahugemoonillusionwednesday

I knew Yahoo! was trolling Kirupa looking for stories

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Glos everytime I read your posts I think I get brain damage ■■■■ your smartness I wish my brain was half as good as yours.

Guess I gotta stop playing videogames…

[SIZE=“7”]NAH[/SIZE] :lol:

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I beg to differ. Any fool can copy/paste numbers from wikipedia. It’s a different thing to interpret information, draw conclusions from it, and then present it in such a way that non-magic believers can understand it :P.

Glos isn’t a storage device, he’s just got a whole lot of computing power :rd:.