Moonwalk with Your Eyes A Pocket Field Guide
Are you ready to take a quarter of a million mile journey with just your eyes? Then welcome to "Moon Walk with Your Eyes"! We often take the beauty of our nearest astronomical neighbor for granted. How often do we really stop to think about why it looks t
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Tammy Plotner
Moonwalk with Your Eyes A Pocket Field Guide
Tammy Plotner 8215 Center Street Caledonia OH 43314 USA [email protected]
ISBN 978-1-4419-0645-8 e-ISBN 978-1-4419-0646-5 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0646-5 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London Library of Congress Control Number: 2009941058 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
Foreword
Fig. 1 Robert Gendler. We shall never know when this happened, on the shores of what vanished sea. There were no eyes or cameras present to record so obscure, so inconspicuous an event. Now, the Moon calls again – and this time life responds with a roar that shakes Earth and sky.
Arthur C. Clarke Since the birth of the Moon over four billion years ago, it and the Earth have been locked together in a cosmic embrace separated by some 384,403 km of space (Fig. 1). When it first formed, it rotated much faster on its axis, its tidal bulge leading the way. Because the lunar crust was not liquefied, this bulge could not keep up the frenzied pace and it passed
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Foreword
beyond the Earth–Moon line. Thanks to torque of Earth’s gravity, the bulge was captured like a wrench tightening a nut, and the Moon has slowed its spin to match its orbital rate – always facing Earth. We call it the “Near Side”… and it is only as far away as your own back yard. This gravitation coupling affects us deeply. It touches the environment around us as the Earth–Moon system governs the oceans tides and drains kinetic energy and angular momentum from the Earth’s rotation. The phase of the Moon, it would seem, also influences the behavior of a number of animals – including humans. Animals are not just responding to the changes in amount of available light, which may make them better predators or able to see each other – but possibly to monthly circadian rhythms in operation – as in humans. It is also possible that we are both responding to gravitational effects by our Earth–Moon system. Just ask any fisherman, and he will tell you it is true… Just as many farmers also use a planting “Moon calendar.” Ancient cultures thought of time as a circle – with no beginning or end (Fig. 2). We had no
