Boomer On the Ground - Lunar Lunacy
Lunar Lunacy: A Dispatch from our Boomer on the Ground on Terra Not-So-Firma
By
Thomas B. Wallace
The following story will seem fantastic to readers of Human Imagineering unless of course you have been following the Mars Rover series, in which case it may not seem so fantastic after all. Because it involves celestial objects whose movements and perturbations are supposed to be well known, and therefore to which we pay little attention, it also is fairly easy to verify. Still, some background in how this reporter came to be observing these events may be called for, if for no other reason than to give the reader some depth of understanding on which to pin what may become a rapidly whirling reality ride.
In May of 2004, through the agency of an old and dear friend with whom I had re-established contact after a thirty year hiatus, I began posting my Mars Rover series on a website called Rumor Mill News. Rumor Mill News is an “alternative” internet News Service whose agents research and report on events, people and concepts that do not make it into the “mainstream” media. It takes stories that are posted from a wide variety of perspectives in its self-proclaimed mission “…to provide all the pieces of the puzzle so that readers can put them together…” As one would expect from such a mission there are a huge variety of issues, ideas, events and concepts that find their way to Rumor Mill News web pages. One such series of events was a thread being posted by my old friend that called into question the movements and positions of the moon during its monthly sojourn through the heavens.
Simply put his stories said that there was something wrong. The moon was not moving like it was supposed to. It was out of position, too low or too high in the sky, coming up or going down in the wrong place, moving to far west, or too far east, in short, behaving not at all like a steadfast and predictable celestial object to which we pay scant attention simply because it is there all the time.
Because of my experience with the Mars Rovers and NASA’s steadfast refusal to even talk about the issues that the photos from these rovers raised I realized first that there might well be something going on in the heavens and we would not necessarily hear about it from the scientists in whom we had entrusted our power to observe and report to us those events. I also realized that these things being reported by my friend should be easily enough verified, or debunked.
Sending myself through a crash course in Lunar Orbital Mechanics and the perspective inherent from the earth I learned many things very quickly. First, where and when the moon rises and sets varies according to your position on the earth, your latitude and longitude. It also varies with whether or not you are using daylight savings time or standard time, and how far you are in terms of positive or negative hours from Greenwich England, which is where our standard meridian resides for determining time zones, etc.
Ultimately I found the U.S. Naval Observatory website that gives Rise, Transit and Set times for any given set of latitude and longitude coordinates on the planet. I also ultimately found a small computer program called MoonLoc – Moon Locator – that will predict the moon’s position both as an azimuth – compass heading – and altitude – how high in the sky by degrees on a circle.
Eventually, I began making lunar observations myself and taking notes on those observations. This particular article is going to deal with one of the most startling discoveries I made and present the evidence of my senses, using pre-existing photographs of the moon to illustrate what those observations were and are.
The reader is cautioned to understand that the following is the truth as I observed it, and that understanding that truth may lead to a serious sense of dislocation from what s/he has understood to be reality for most of their lives. I make no apologies for that.
Too often we accept the world around us and how it works without ever actually thinking about it, or observing whether or not it actually works like we think it does. When, for whatever reason we awake and observe and make note that it does not appear to be working as we thought it was supposed to it is bound to be a bit of a shock.
What is more shocking is the resounding silence one hears on these subjects from those who are supposed, as a part of their professional responsibility, to be observing these phenomena and reporting on them to us. After all that is what we pay them for…
This article will be the introduction to a new Boomer On the Ground series on the lunar strangeness going on, but this particular series of events is the most spectacular, and perhaps the most easily verifiable of them all, as all that it requires is one good look at the moon’s face during its waxing cycle as it nears full. The rest of this article is based on two articles previously posted in RMN that I will reprint as the first two sections of this article that will conclude with a third section…
Section 1 – The Buzzards Beak
I personally have never been able to see a “man in the moon” rather I have always seen what looked like a buzzard, sort of like this picture from Encarta Online that follows:
Figure 1 - Moon as seen from earth, general orientation – notice that the tip of the buzzard’s beak is at the 4:00 position and that the great crater of Tycho is at roughly the 7:00 position and the Buzzard's Eye just above the beak is in the 2:30 position. I have taken the liberty of sectoring this photo into the clock positions so the reader can better visualize the relationships and positions. Understand that all of these hourly positions are approximately 15o of arc from one another.
Section 2: Buzzard Dips His Head
"…Now Follows a picture of the moon in the orientation in which I saw it this morning...(06-04-2004 at approximately 06:00) Once again I have taken the liberty of removing the repeat of my previous post so that readers can see the picture in close proximity to this text... I honestly do not know if this is a normal varient in the postion of the moon or even if the original picture from encarta had not been rotated in some way. I am just making an observation from what I have seen…"
Figure 2 - Once again I have sectored this photo to better illustrate the postion of the moon's orientation as observed on June 4, 2004 at approximately 06:00 CDT . Please note that the postions of the major landmarks of the Buzzard's Beak, the Buzzard's Eye and The Crater Tycho have significantly shifted on the clock face.
In July I noticed that this trend of the rotation of the moon’s face around what appeared to be its horizontal axis was continuing with the following post to RumorMillNews…
BREAKING: MOON CONTINUES ROTATING ON AXIS *PIC*
Posted By: Nine_Of_Eleven <Send E-Mail>
Date: Saturday, 3 July 2004, 7:24 a.m.
"...On June 4th I posted an article pointing out that not only was the moon out of position but that it appeared, relative to some "moon-as-seen-from-the-earth" photos, to be rotated slightly - about 12 degrees - clockwise. this morning, as I was tracking the moon's descent a finally clear, dark sky gave me an incredibly good view of the near full moon about thirty degrees off the horizon. to my surprise the moon had rotated another 10-12 degrees clockwise on its axis. No one seems to have noticed this but me. In a series of posts I will post the original photos I had posted, along with those that have been adjusted to demonstrate the rotation I have observed. The reader is cautioned to note that all of these are based on the same photo. The original is a "moon-as-seen-from-the-earth", the second is the same photo having been adjusted to show the angularity I observed a month ago, and the third is the same photo adjusted to show the angularity I observed this morning...
...Fianlly here is how the moon appeared this morning, July 3rd, 2004 at approximately 06:30 hours CDT. Note now that the Buzzards beak lower jaw is at the 6:00 o'clock position and the eye is at the 4:00 o'clock position..."
Figure 3 - Moon as it appeared on July 3, 2004 at approximately 06:30 hours CDT. Once again this image has been sectored into the clock positions to better illustrate the changes in orientation of the major landmarks; The Buzzard's Beak, The Buzzard's Eye and the Crater Tycho. Please note that the Buzzards Beak has moved from the original general orientation at 4:00 o’clock position to the 6:00 position here in July, a movement during the month of June of approximately 15o – 20o from its 5:00 o’clock position on June 4, 2004 and a movement from the “normal orientation” of almost 30o in the clockwise direction.
Section 3 - Readers Respond
It should be noted here that there was a response from a reader to the July posts that pointed out that some of what is called Lunar Libration, which is a natural and normal tendency for the moons landmarks to appear to move up and down in latitude because of a slight inclination of the moon’s orbital plane to the earth and a slight variation that will occur relative to the position of the observer on the earth. My research indicated that the maximum movement attributable to Lunar Libration was some 7 degrees and 7 minutes of latitude, or roughly ½ hour on the clock face.. So, since we were looking at anywhere from 15 – 30 degrees of movement from the normal position, though some of this might be accountable as Lunar Libration, certainly not all could be. Clearly something else was going on.
This leads us to the observations made last night shortly after the moon was supposed to have risen at 19:30 hours at 121o of Azimuth. Apparently it decided to make its appearance a little earlier than expected, because when I went to our heliport at 20:05 the moon, which was scheduled at that time to be at 5o Altitude and 126o Azimuth was actually at 20o Altitude and 135o Azimuth. Additionally, the following is an illustration of the moon’s face as it appeared at that time…
Figure 4 - The moon as it appeared at 20:05 on July 29, 2004. Note that the Landmarks have shifted almost 60 degrees from their postions in early July, with the Buzzards Beak now at the 2:00 position, the Buzzard’s Eye at the 12:30 position and the Crater Tycho at the 5:00 position. This represents a nearly 60o shift to the counter clockwise in roughly 27 days.
Finally so the reader can get some sense of proportion to these changes I have mounted all four views of the moon’s orientation :
Figure 5 - "Normal" Figure 6 – June 4, 2004
Figure 7 – July 3, 2004 Figure 8 – July 29, 2004
Additionally, I have used a line drawn from the bottom of the large dark area on the western face and connected across the bottom of the Buzzards Beak to illustrate the angle changes that have occurred during the two month period. I have insert a horizontal reference to the ends of these lines, but it is clear that all of these angles exceed 7o 7” of arc.
When placed side-by-side like this it becomes clear to the observer that there is disturbing and radical movement of the moon, as seen from the earth for whatever reasons may cause such movement. The Crater Tycho moves from a position low in the Southwester Quadrant of the face to a postion High in the Southwestern Quadrant, and then to a position in the lower part of the Southeastern Quatrant. I have so far heard many theories about the possible causes of this movement, but none of them have come from the astronomical community, either amateur or professional, though they have been called upon on several occasions to offer opinions. I do not myself offer any particular opinions as to why this apparent movement is going on, only that I know it is and it is out of the ordinary expectations of Lunar Libration. Perhaps some professional astronomers would like to weigh in with why such radical movements are not of "any great significance"?
The next in this series of articles will compare the projected lunar positions, as well as their predicted rise and set times with the actual data that has been gathered by several observers throughout the planet, both northern and southern hemispheres…
