This is a tribute to the naturally curious scientists and visionaries who strive to understand the worlds around us... the Apollo 11 Lunar Landing was 50 years ago and we continue to explore and learn...
Star Date 6:00 am on Saturday September 29th, 2012 behind a cold front. I got up because the full Moon was just so beautiful. It was shining in my eyes and actually woke me up. The photos did not do the Moon justice so I hope this nocturne painting does. It also gave me a chance to use up the old oils on my large studio palette. I of course, will deny ever writing about using these thick paints that maybe should have been discarded instead. Sometimes you can mix some really interesting colours out of these crusty remains - and not just brown. I had to use artistic licence and some large, post cold frontal stratocumulus cloud shapes to make this composition work. The skies were clear above the boundary layer behind that cold front allowing the moonglow to shine through. The long path of the moonlight through the atmosphere of the earth results in the Rayleigh scattering of the shorter blue wavelengths out of the beam. A red Moon is the result. I included as much detail as I could without getting picky.
The Sea of Crisis is the most prominent in this painting on the upper edge of the Sea of Tranquility. These large and dark areas are basaltic plains formed by ancient volcanic eruptions on the Moon. They were dubbed maria which is Latin for "seas" by early astronomers who mistook them for low albedo actual seas. The lava plains on the lunar service are mainly on the side facing Earth. Apparently the Earth's gravity pulled the molten interior of the Moon closer to the surface and thus more susceptible to seeping out during a meteor strike.
The Earth once had a Cousin Planet called Theia about 4.5 billion years ago. Theia is from the name of the mythical Greek Titan who was the mother of Selene, the goddess of the Moon. Theia was about the size of Mars but was on a collision course with Earth after some gravitational influence from Jupiter and perhaps Venus. Evidence from 2016 research suggests that the impact was a head-on collision and that Theia's remains can be found in both the Earth and the Moon. Additional evidence published in 2019 suggests that Theia may have formed in the outer solar system rather than the inner solar system and that much of Earth's water originated on Theia. When the dust settled the Earth had been much transformed. The Moon was orbiting the Earth and Theia was gone. The Moon helps to keep the Earth on an axial tilt which gives us the seasons we enjoy so much and keeps the Earth habitable.
Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin landed the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle in the Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC. Armstrong became the first person to step onto the lunar surface six hours later at 10:56 p.m. EDT July 20th (July 21 at 02:56:15 UTC). With more than half a billion people watching on television, Neil climbed down the ladder and proclaimed: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Buzz Aldrin joined him 19 minutes later. They spent about two and a quarter hours together outside the spacecraft and collected 47.5 pounds of lunar material to bring back to Earth.
Anaxagoras (500 BCE–428 BCE) was the first documented thinker to propose that the Moon shines with light reflected from the "red-hot stone" we know as the sun. Anaxagoras also said that the Moon had mountains and he believed that it was inhabited. He surmised that the heavenly bodies were masses of stone torn from the earth and ignited by rapid rotation. He explained that sun and the stars were fiery stones but we do not feel the heat because of their enormous distance from earth. Showing even greater genius he was also then able to take the next step and become the first to correctly explain the reason for eclipses of the sun and moon.
Anaxagoras brought philosophy and the spirit of scientific inquiry from Ionia to Athens. His observations of the celestial bodies and the fall of meteorites led him to form new theories of the universal order. He attempted to give a scientific account meteors, rainbows, and the sun. Anaxagoras thought the sun was a mass of blazing metal, larger than the Peloponnese. The Peloponnese or Peloponnesus is a peninsula and geographic region in southern Greece with an area of 21,550 km². Anaxagoras did think that the earth was flat and floated on 'strong' air under it and that disturbances in this air sometimes causes earthquakes. You can't be right all of the time.
Further, it was another Greek astronomer and mathematician Aristarchus of Samos (310 – 230 BCE) who presented the first known heliocentric model that placed the Sun at the center of the known universe with the Earth revolving around it. He was influenced by Philolaus of Croton, but Aristarchus identified the "central fire" with the Sun. Aristarchus also put the other planets in their correct order of distance around the Sun. Like Anaxagoras two centuries earlier, he suspected that the stars were just other bodies like the Sun, albeit further away from Earth. His astronomical ideas were often rejected in favor of the earth centre, geocentric theories of Aristotle and Ptolemy. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 – 1543 AD) attributed the heliocentric theory to Aristarchus even though he probably figured it out on his own.
I used the shoreline from
#2236 "Singleton Sunset Altocumulus" as the land was not very apparent in the photograph. I also used the morning stratocumulus clouds from June 11th, 2019 behind a strong late spring cold front. They were identical to that Moon set from years ago.
The porch lights were twinkling on the western shore of Singleton along with a smattering of smaller lights from the Singleton Lake Family Campground. The sun would soon be rising above the eastern horizon - the start of another day. I was still swimming although the mid September water was certainly getting chilly.
In the era of fake everything, science and nature are among the only things to really believe in. As you can see the science of the Earth and the Moon goes back to the dawn of creation but yet there are those who still believe the Earth is flat and that the Lunar Landing was all a hoax and filmed in Hollowood (intentional spelling).
Amazing. There is still much to learn. What is antimatter? Dark energy?
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Pixels. Thank you.
