Last evening, as we were waiting to catch the bus downtown, I noticed that there was a full moon. I also remembered that there was a full moon at the end of the month in October and November in South Dakota. I found this to be curious, and I posed this query to Kelly, Diana, and Hannah: Can a full moon be seen anywhere in the world on the same date? None of us knew for certain, but we arrived at a mutual hypothesis that whatever you see in the Northern hemisphere will be the opposite of what you see in the Southern hemisphere, essentially that if there is a full moon in Seoul, there will be a new moon in Sydney.
We were kind of right but mostly wrong. The truth is that the phases of the moon are the same everywhere on Earth, meaning that there is a full moon right now both in Seoul and in Sydney. There is a difference, however, in the perspective of the moon between Northern and Southern hemispheres. If the moon is in a crescent shape and the ends of the crescent are pointing towards the right in Seoul, they will be pointing to the left in Sydney. I know this is going to sound obnoxiously sentimental, but I find it to be rather beautiful and remarkable and comforting and thought-provoking to know that the moon (for the most part) will look exactly the same in all places in the world on any given night. I also find it to be slightly depressing because to some degree it makes me feel very small and insignificant. Anyways, if you’d like a slightly more technical description of what I’ve just told you above, visit this site:
http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/time/moon/hemispheres.html
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Its a pleasure to read your writing Jessica! We should have some hot blogging/coffee shop dates and maybe you can inspire me to update more often. Or maybe I'll get super lazy and just link my blog to yours...
ReplyDeletehot blogging/coffee shop dates sound ideal...i was doing good on updating posts a few times a week, but have gotten lazy in the last few days as our pseudo-intellectual discourse via facebook message has managed to occupy most of my free time...i just counted...27 messages in all - well done, us! (maybe)...
ReplyDeleteanyways, i read some of your blog as well the other day...it made me giggle...i especially enjoyed the one about going to church and having to tell the entire congregation where you were from..."You know that visiting Ethiopian family? That was us..." good stuff...