APOD: Full Observatory Moon (2024 Jan 27)

[APOD Robot]

Full Observatory Moon

Explanation: A popular name for January's full moon in the northern hemisphere is the Full Wolf Moon. As the new year's first full moon, it rises over Las Campanas Observatory in this dramatic Earth-and-moonscape. Peering from the foreground like astronomical eyes are the observatory's twin 6.5 meter diameter Magellan telescopes. The snapshot was captured with telephoto lens across rugged terrain in the Chilean Atacama Desert, taken at a distance of about 9 miles from the observatory and about 240,000 miles from the lunar surface. Of course the first full moon of the lunar new year, known to some as the Full Snow Moon, will rise on February 24.

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[alter-ego]

[JohnD]

Thank you, alter-ego!

That's no stupid 'Wolf Moon", that's the Chad-Moon!
John

[Roy]

The staged snapshot is quite provoking. So far. But nobody under the age of 80, American, knows who Kilroy was.

[johnnydeep]

The staged snapshot is quite provoking. So far. But nobody under the age of 80, American, knows who Kilroy was.

I know who/what Kilroy was and I'm 60 and American. It has a long history in popular culture and literature that merely originated in WWII.

In popular culture
Peter Viereck wrote in 1948 that "God is like Kilroy. He, too, Sees it all."[34]

Kilroy is seen scrawling "Kilroy is here" on a wall in Tennessee Williams's 1953 play Camino Real, which he revises to "was" before his final departure. Kilroy functions in the play as "a folk character...who here is a sort of Everyman."[38] The graffiti appears on the cover of the first edition published by New Directions. Isaac Asimov's short story "The Message" (1955) depicts a time-travelling George Kilroy from the 30th century as the writer of the graffiti.[34]

Thomas Pynchon's novel V. (1963) includes the proposal that the Kilroy doodle originated from a band-pass filter diagram.[19]

Ken Young wrote a parody of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas which was transmitted to Apollo 8 on December 25, 1968. It featured the lines "When what to his wondering eyes should appear, but a Burma-Shave sign saying, 'Kilroy was here'."[39]

In the 1975 M*A*S*H episode The Bus, Hawkeye Pierce (Alan Alda) writes "Kilroy" in a dust-encrusted bus window as B.J. Hunnicutt (Mike Farrell) peers out from behind the window, his hands and nose resting on its top edge.[40][41]

In 1983, rock band Styx released their seventh studio album, Kilroy Was Here. The album functions as a light rock opera, telling the story of Robert Kilroy, a rock and roll performer who was placed in a futuristic prison for "rock and roll misfits" by the anti-rock-and-roll group the Majority for Musical Morality (MMM) and its founder Dr. Everett Righteous.[42] When Jonathan Chance (played by guitarist Tommy Shaw) finally meets Kilroy at the very end of the song Mr. Roboto, Kilroy unmasks and yells, "I'm Kilroy! Kilroy!" ending the song.

Kilroy was also featured on New Zealand stamp #1422 issued on March 19, 1997.[43]

In the opening credits of the 2009 American sitcom Community, two Kilroys are drawn in blue ink on the inside of a paper fortune teller, their noses forming the L's of lead actor Joel McHale's name.[44]

[johnnydeep]

Yeah, Kilroy or perhaps a "moon snowman":

Click to view full size image

[Syringa vulgaris]

Dunno about you, but I only see a bit more than a quarter.

[Ann]

The staged snapshot is quite provoking. So far. But nobody under the age of 80, American, knows who Kilroy was.

Of course I, a 68-year-old Swede, have heard the expression "Kilroy was here". But I had no idea that he was depicted like this:

Engraving of Kilroy on the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. Photo credit (and engraving credit???): Luis Rubio from Alexandria, VA, USA

---

The things you learn by reading Starship Asterisk*.

Ann

[JohnD]

Ann
He wasn't!

Or at least he didn't at first. Kilroy and Mr.Chad, or Chad, had American and British origins, both before WW2, but became conflated during the war, as the US was recruited to the struggle.
The graffito of the long nosed person peering over a wall/fence was used in the UK to complain using the phrase "Wot! No cheese?" or some other lack. That's why I named this APoD as a "Chad-Moon"!

See the Wiki entry, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilroy_was_here where a full description of their independent origins is given.
John