> Now, what happens if the moon is not at the horizon, but higher up at the sky?
Moon follows the sun to the west so to move moon "higher" up in the sky you need to rewind time (15deg/hour). In e.g. 4 hours moon barely moves in it's 28 day cycle so the moon will look exactly the same (you can take a picture and compare). It's the earth rotation that make moon "go down" or up. I've read your article 2 times and I still don't understand what is apparent problem, no wonder AI had trouble. Also it's hard to reason about up and down when moon move along ecliptic which is curve. Down at noon points elsewhere as down at sunset.
ionwake•32m ago
is this a bad moment to mention how weird it is that the moon is perfectly positioned to create eclipses?
I think its pretty incomprehensible odds if you ask google.
But I could be wrong I know literally nothing about astronomy, it just always surprised me its not common, but it be cool if someone could explain that
steanne•28m ago
it was my vague understanding that what is weird is the apparent size matching. since the moon is slowly moving away, eventually we'll no longer have total solar eclipses, just annular and partial.
helterskelter2•28s ago
The moon is 400 times smaller than the sun, but the sun is 400 times farther away, so they appear to be the same size. The solar eclipse we see, with the moon obscuring the sun but just allowing light around the edges the way it does, may be a very uncommon phenomena.
Sharlin•27m ago
The sky is spherical, so straight lines in the sky aren’t straight lines on its 2D projection on the retina. Rather, straight lines are great circles. So if you trace the great circle that connects the sun and the moon, the moon should "point" along that great circle – which can be considerably off of what we think of as a straight line (which is curved in reality).
dvh•35m ago
Moon follows the sun to the west so to move moon "higher" up in the sky you need to rewind time (15deg/hour). In e.g. 4 hours moon barely moves in it's 28 day cycle so the moon will look exactly the same (you can take a picture and compare). It's the earth rotation that make moon "go down" or up. I've read your article 2 times and I still don't understand what is apparent problem, no wonder AI had trouble. Also it's hard to reason about up and down when moon move along ecliptic which is curve. Down at noon points elsewhere as down at sunset.