FreeLists / az-observing / [AZ-Observing] Re: By The Light of The Southerly Moon

["Steve Coe" <stevecoe@xxxxxxxxx>]

Tom and Brian;

I have had two times in the last month were the position of the Moon =
seemed
quite far from the ecliptic.  The first was last night; the Moon rarely
shines directly into the south-facing glass doors on my house.  I got up
from the computer to fix a sandwich at about 11PM and noticed a LOT of
moonshine through those windows.  When I let the dog into the backyard =
it
was also immediately obvious how low the Moon was--near the palm trees =
in my
neighbor's yard.

The other instance was having the crescent Moon near the zenith for a =
public
viewing session about 10 days ago.  That is also an unusual position for =
the
Moon to be located at during that phase.

Ain't that weird?
Steve Coe


-----Original Message-----
From: az-observing-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:az-observing-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Tom Polakis
Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2005 1:15 PM
To: AZ-Observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [AZ-Observing] By The Light of The Southerly Moon

During the past few mornings, the waning moon has been shining in the =
south
windows of our house.  It seemed like it was really far south, =
especially as
I was watching it set over the Estrellas this morning.  It turns out =
that it
is about as far south as it gets.

I plugged a time range into the JPL Horizons Ephemeris Generator
(http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.html).  It shows the moon reaching a
declination as southerly as -29d 11' tomorrow at 4 a.m., when it will =
also
be due south.  This is more than 5 1/2 degrees farther south than the =
sun's
Winter Solstice declination.

What this means to weekend observers is that we will have a Last Quarter
moon that waits until 2 a.m. to rise on Sunday morning.

Tom

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