APOD: Colors of the Moon (2020 Nov 11)

[APOD Robot]

Colors of the Moon

Explanation: What color is the Moon? It depends on the night. Outside of the Earth's atmosphere, the dark Moon, which shines by reflected sunlight, appears a magnificently brown-tinged gray. Viewed from inside the Earth's atmosphere, though, the moon can appear quite different. The featured image highlights a collection of apparent colors of the full moon documented by one astrophotographer over 10 years from different locations across Italy. A red or yellow colored moon usually indicates a moon seen near the horizon. There, some of the blue light has been scattered away by a long path through the Earth's atmosphere, sometimes laden with fine dust. A blue-colored moon is more rare and can indicate a moon seen through an atmosphere carrying larger dust particles. What created the purple moon is unclear -- it may be a combination of several effects. The last image captures the total lunar eclipse of 2018 July -- where the moon, in Earth's shadow, appeared a faint red -- due to light refracted through air around the Earth. The next full moon will occur at the end of this month (moon-th) and is known in some cultures as the Beaver Moon.

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[Ann]

I would have loved to see that blue Moon.

Or rather, those blue Moons.

Ann

[XgeoX]

I would have loved to see that blue Moon.

Or rather, those blue Moons.

Ann

Blue moon
you saw me standing alone
without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own...

Eric

[abrinkman]

Beautifully curated pictures...and for the photographer, a great way to revisit 10 years of his work in one view. Very nice...

[dickzland]

The moon image in outer ring at 10:30 location - cannot be taken from Italy, but much farther North.
Or the image was rotated after being taken. The 'southern highlands' on the moon, for USA observers is around 5:00 location.

[Chris Peterson]

The moon image in outer ring at 10:30 location - cannot be taken from Italy, but much farther North.
Or the image was rotated after being taken. The 'southern highlands' on the moon, for USA observers is around 5:00 location.

The 5:00 location with respect to what? The Moon rotates about 180° as it crosses the sky from rise to set. Assuming these images were taken at all different times from rise to set, most have been rotated in order to make them have about the same orientation with respect to each other.

[Sa Ji Tario]

The dream of children, collection of colored balls.

[orin stepanek]

Mommy those balls are pretty!!! 🟠 🟡 🟢

[neufer]

the moon is made of a greene cheese?

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<<"The Moon is made of green cheese" is a statement referring to a fanciful belief that the Moon is composed of cheese. In its original formulation as a proverb and metaphor for credulity with roots in fable, this refers to the perception of a simpleton who sees a reflection of the Moon in water and mistakes it for a round cheese wheel. It is widespread as a folkloric motif among many of the world's cultures.

"The Moon is made of green cheese" was one of the most popular proverbs in 16th and 17th-century English literature, and it was also in use after this time. It likely originated in this formulation in 1546, when The Proverbs of John Heywood claimed "the moon is made of a greene cheese."

Sean M. Carroll explained why there was no need to "sample the moon to know it's not made of cheese." He said the hypothesis is "absurd", failing against our knowledge of the universe and, "This is not a proof, there is no metaphysical proof, like you can proof a statement in logic or math that the moon is not made of green cheese. But science nevertheless passes judgments on claims based on how well they fit in with the rest of our theoretical understanding." Notwithstanding this uncontrovertible argument, the harmonic signature of moon rock—the seismic velocity at which shockwaves travel—is said to be closer to cheese than to any rock on earth. Dennis Lindley used the myth to help explain the necessity of Cromwell's rule in Bayesian probability: "In other words, if a decision-maker thinks something cannot be true and interprets this to mean it has zero probability, he will never be influenced by any data, which is surely absurd. So leave a little probability for the moon being made of green cheese; it can be as small as 1 in a million, but have it there since otherwise an army of astronauts returning with samples of the said cheese will leave you unmoved.">>

[MarkBour]

'Tis a beautiful collection!

It would be interesting to see them plotted according to the altitude angle at which they were taken. As a crude measure, some of the most red images show the Moon as vertically squeezed, indicating they were probably taken with the Moon near the horizon. The unusual purple image is also somewhat squeezed, so maybe it was also low in the sky.