LUNA Issue One Romantic Science Winter 2016
Luna • Vol 1 Winter 2016
about this issue The Romantic Science issue of Luna magazine focuses on presenting the many profiles of our beloved moon; from factual science to the romantic folklore and astrological interpretations. For the pu rpo se o f cre at i n g m or e awareness of the moon’s import ance and her influence in our lives.
S el ina Le e fo u n d e r / c r e a t ive dir e c t or S a nd ra I s l e exe c u t ive d ir ec t or L il y S he n e d it o r in c h ie f S el ina Su k h e e Le e a r t d ire c t or Mz Lee gra ph ic d e sign Brent H e n r y p h o t o gra phy S el ina Le e c o lla ge s p o n s o rs A n c h o r S t e a m B rew e r y Ac a de my o f A r t U ni ve rs i t y
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History of the Moon Andrew Fazekas National Geographic
The Moon Matt Williams Universe Today
Moon Phases NASA Photography by Thierry Legault
Rare Super Blood Moon Total Eclipse Andrew Fazekas National Geographic
Selene Marsha Moore Pantheon
40 Moon Tarot Jan Miller Tarot
Luna • Vol 1 Winter 2016
Issue 1 Romantic Science
Luna • Vol 1 Winter 2016
History of the Moon Andrew Fazekas National Geographic
Everyone with clear skies across the Americas will have a front-row seat Sunday night to a rare total eclipse of the super-harvest moon. On the evening of September 27, three separate lunar events converge. The total eclipse coincides with the full moon nearest the fall equinox, known as the harvest moon. What’s more, the moon is at its closest approach to Earth for the year, making it also a supermoon or perigee moon. That’s why it’s being coined by some as a Super Harvest Blood Moon —a mouthful to be sure. This confluence has happened only five times since 1900. According to NASA, the last time we saw this celestial triple combination was in 1982, and it won’t repeat until 2033. The most spectacular part of the eclipse will be the totality phase, when Earth’s shadow completely covers the moon and turns it an eerie red. The moon will dip into the deepest and darkest part of Earth’s shadow, or umbra, during the totality phase, which lasts as long as 72 minutes.
The Earth’s moon causes tides, creating a rhythm that has guided humans for thousands of years.
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Luna • Vol 1 Winter 2016
Structure Earth’s moon has a core, mantle and crust. The solid, iron-rich inner core is 149 miles (240km) in radius. It is surrounded by a liquid iron shell 56 miles (90km) thick. A partially molten layer with a thickness of 93 miles (150km) surrounds the iron core. The mantle extends from the top of the partially molten layer to the bottom of the moon’s crust. It is most likely made of minerals like Olivine and Pyroxene, which are made up of magnesium, iron, silicon and oxygen atoms. The crust is thicker on the moon’s near- side hemisphere ~43 miles (70km) than the far-side “darkside” ~93 miles (150kim); made up of oxygen, silicon, magnesium, iron, calcium and aluminum, with small amounts of Titanium, Uranium, Thorium, Potassium and Hydrogen. Atmosphere The moon has a very thin and weak atmosphere, called the exosphere. It does not provide any protection from the Sun’s radiation or impacts from meteroroids. Temperature The moon’s temperature reaches about 260 °F (127 °C) when in full sun, but in darkness, the temperatures plummets to about -280 °F (-173 °C).
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Gravity The moon’s gravity is 1/6 of the Earth’s, which is why in footage of moonwalks, astronauts appear to almost bounce across the surface. Moons/Rings The Earth’s moon has no moons of its own or rings. Surface With too sparse an atmosphere to impede impacts, a steady rain of asteroids, meteoroids and comets strikes the surface of the moon, leaving numerous craters behind. Over billions of years, theses impacts have ground up the surface of the moon into fragments ranging from huge boulders to powder. Nearly the entire moon is covered by a rubble pile of charcoal-gray, powdery dust and rocky debris called the lunar regolith. Beneath is a region of fractured bedrock referred to as the Media-regolith. These light and dark areas represent rocks of different composition and ages, which provide evidence for how the early crust may have crystallized from a lunar magma ocean. The craters themselves, which have been preserved for billions of years, provide an impact history for the moon and other bodies in the inner solar system.
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Size With a radius of 1,079.6 miles (1,737.5 km), the moon is less than a third the width of the Earth. If Earth were the size of a nickel, the moon would be about as big as a coffee bean. Distance The moon is farther away from the Earth than most people realize. The moon is an average of 238,855 miles (384,400 km) away. That means 30 Earth-sized planets could fit in between the Earth and the moon. Formation The leading theory of the moon’s origin is that a Mars-sized body collided with Earth about 4.5 billion years ago. The newly formed moon was in a molten state, but within about 100 million years, most of the global “magma ocean” had crystallized, with less-dense rocks floating upward and eventually forming the lunar c
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THE MOON Matt Williams UNIVERSETODAY.com
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Human beings have been observing the Moon since prehistoric times, and understanding the Moon’s cycles was one of the earliest developments in astronomy. The earliest examples of this comes from the 5th century BCE , when Babylonian astronomers had recorded the 18year Satros cycle of lunar ecl i ps es , and Indi an as tronom ers had described the Moon’s monthly elongation. The ancient Greek philosopher Anaxagoras (ca. 510–428 BCE ) reasoned that the Sun and Moon were both giant spherical rocks, and the latter reflected the light of the former. In Aristotle’s “On the Heavens“, which he wrote in 350 BCE , the Moon was said to mark the boundary between the spheres of the mutable elements (earth, water, air and fire), and the heavenly stars—an influential philosophy that would dominate for centuries
Just like the moon, I go through phases. In the 2nd century BCE , Seleucus of Seleucia correctly theorized that tides were due to the attraction of the Moon, and that their height depends on the Moon’s position relative to the Sun. In the same century, Aristarchus computed the size and distance of the Moon from Earth, obtaining a value of about twenty times the radius of Earth for the distance. These figures were greatly improved by Ptolemy (90–168 BCE ).
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By the 4th century BCE, the Chinese astronomer Shi Shen gave instructions for predicting solar and lunar eclipses. By the time of the Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE ), astronomers recognized that moonlight was reflected from the Sun, and Jin Fang postulated that the Moon was spherical in shape. In 499 CE , the Indian astronomer Aryabhata mentioned in his Aryabhatiya that reflected sunlight is the cause of the shining of the Moon. Th e a s t ro n o m e r a n d p hys i c i s t A l h a ze n (965–1039 BCE ) found that sunlight was not reflected from the Moon like a mirror, but that light was emitted from every part of the Moon in all directions. Shen Kuo (1031 BCE –1095 BCE ) of the Song dynasty created an allegory to explain the waxing and waning phases of the Moon. According to Shen, it was comparable to a round ball of reflective silver that, when doused with white powder and viewed from the side, would appear to be a crescent. During the Middle Ages, before the invention of the telescope, the Moon was increasingly recognized as a sphere, though many believed that it was “perfectly smooth”. In keeping with medieval astronomy, which combined Aristotle’s theories of the universe with Christian dogma, this view would later be challenged as part of the Scientific Revolution (during the 16th and 17th century) where the Moon and other planets would come to be seen as being similar to Earth.
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Using a telescope of his own design, Galileo Galilei drew one of the first telescopic drawings of the Moon in 1609, which he included in his book Sidereus Nuncius (“Starry Messenger). From his observations, he noted that the Moon was not smooth, but had mountains and craters. These observations, coupled with observations of moons orbiting Jupiter, helped him to advance the heliocentric model of the universe. Telescopic mapping of the Moon followed, which led to the lunar features being mapped in detail and named. The names assigned by Italian astronomers Giovannia Battista Riccioli and Francesco Maria Grimaldi are still in use today. The lunar map and book on lunar features created by German astronomers Wilhelm Beer and Johann Heinrich Mädler between 1834 and 1837 were the first accurate trigonometric study of lunar features, and included the heights of more than a thousand mountains. Lunar craters, first noted by Galileo, were thought to be volcanic until the 1870s, when English astronomer Richard Proctor proposed that they were formed by collisions. This view gained support throughout the remainder of the 19th century; and by the early 20th century, led to the development of lunar stratigraphy – part of the growing field of astrogeology.
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Luna • Vol 1 Winter 2016
MOON PHASES
NASA Photography by Thierry Legault
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Phase 1 NEW MOON During the first half of the cycle the moon gets larger every night. This part of the cycle is called waxing. After full moon, the shape gets smaller every night. This half of the cycle is called waning. At the time of the New Moon, the Moon cannot be seen neither in the day nor at night. Phase 2 WAXING CRESCENT The waxing Crescent Moon is visible a few days after the New Moon and will be in the western sky after sunset. The crescent gets thicker every day until First Quarter phase is reached.
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At a basic level, the lunar cycle begins every month and can be considered to consist of four major phases, each one taking about a week.
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Phase 3 FIRST QUARTER One week after Full Moon is first quarter, at this stage the moon is a quarter the way around its monthly orbit. During this stage half of the moon is visible. Phase 4 WAXING GIBBOUS At this time, half of the moon is lit up. Waxing means to slowly get bigger.
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Phase 5 FULL MOON Occurs two weeks after the New Moon and is half way around its monthly orbit. The entire disk of the Moon is lit and stays in the sky all night long. Full Moons in October called “Harvest Moon” and for November called “Hunter’s Moon”. Phase 6 WANING GIBBOUS During this phase, the moon is not quite lit up all the way by sunlight. The part of the moon that is lit is slowly getting smaller. Waning means to slowly get smaller.
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Phase 7 LAST QUARTER In the last quarter, half of the moon is lit up by the Sun and that lit part is slowly getting smaller. Phase 8 WANING CRESCENT During this phase, a small part of the moon is lit up and getting smaller by the minute.
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Some people call the far side of the hemisphere we never see from Earth — the “dark side,” but that’s misleading...
The light areas of the moon are known as the highlands. The dark features, called maria (Latin for seas), are impact basins that were filled with lava between 4.2 and 1.2 billion years ago. These light and dark areas represent rocks of different composition and ages.
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RARE SUPER BLOOD MOON TOTAL ECLIPSE: How to See A full moon, harvest moon, super moon, and total eclipse of the moon—this one has it all.
Andrew Fazekas National Geographic
Everyone with clear skies across the Americas will have a front-row seat Sunday night to a rare total eclipse of the super-harvest moon. On the evening of September 27, three separate lunar events converge. The total eclipse coincides with the full moon nearest the fall equinox, known as the harvest moon. What’s more, the moon is at its closest approach to Earth for the year, making it also a supermoon or perigee moon. That’s why it’s being coined by some as a Super Harvest Blood Moon— a mouthful to be sure. This confluence has happened only five times since 1900. According to NASA, the last time we saw this celestial triple combination was in 1982, and it won’t repeat until 2033. The most spectacular part of the eclipse will be the totality phase, when Earth’s shadow completely covers the moon and turns it an eerie red. The moon will dip into the deepest and darkest part of Earth’s shadow, or umbra, during the totality phase, which lasts as long as 72 minutes. This weekend’s blood moon will be the last in a series of four lunar eclipses, dubbed a tetrad, over the last two years. That pattern won’t repeat for another 20 years or so.
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Luna • Vol 1 Winter 2016
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The phrase has nothing to do with the actual color of the moon, although a literal "blue moon" (the moon appearing with a tinge of blue) may occur in certain atmospheric conditions: e.g., if volcanic eruptions or fires leave particles in the atmosphere of just the right size to preferentially scatter red light. The term has traditionally referred to an “extra” moon, where a year which normally has 12 moons has 13 instead. The “blue moon” reference is applied to the third moon in a season with four moons, thus correcting the timing of the last month of a season that would have otherwise been expected too early. This happens every two to three years (seven times in the Metonic cycle of 19 years). Owing to the rarity of a blue moon, the term “blue moon” is used colloquially to mean a rare event, as in the phrase “once in a blue moon”.
Luna • Vol 1 Winter 2016
One complete cycle of the moon moving through each of it’s eight phases takes between 29 or 30 days...
What Happens During an Eclipse? In a lunar eclipse, Earth casts a shadow on the moon. This doesn’t happen every time the moon makes its monthly trek around Earth, though; because the moon’s orbit is tilted, it usually falls above or below Earth’s shadow. Total lunar eclipses, known popularly these days as blood moons, are even more rare. They happen only during a full moon, and only when the sun, Earth, and moon are precisely aligned so that our planet’s shadow completely blankets the moon’s disk. This usually happens only twice a year, and can be seen from only one hemisphere of the Earth. For thousands of years, eclipses of Earth’s lone natural satellite have garnered awe and fear. Now that science has explained the celestial mechanics at play, we can all simply enjoy the
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This week’s eclipse is even more special because the lunar disk will appear slightly larger than usual. The moon will be at perigee—its closest point to Earth—just 59 minutes before the height of the eclipse. This will make the lunar disk appear 13 percent larger than average. What Makes the Moon Turn Red? During the total eclipse, sunlight shining through the ring of Earth’s dusty atmosphere is bent, or refracted, toward the red part of the spectrum and cast onto the moon’s surface. As a result, expect to see the lunar disk go from a dark gray color during the partial phase of the eclipse to a reddish-orange color during totality. The moon’s color during totality can vary considerably depending on the amount of dust in the Earth’s atmosphere at the time. Active volcanoes spewing tons of ash into the upper atmosphere, for instance, can trigger blood-red eclipses. No one can predict exactly what color we’ll see before each eclipse.
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Can I See the Eclipse? Skywatchers across eastern North America will get to see all the phases of this special sky show as the moon rides high in the eastern sky, while observers in the far western parts of the continent will see the moon begin to be gobbled up by Earth’s shadow as it rises in the east, just after local sunset. Meanwhile, eclipse watchers in South America will see the show later in the night local time, and skygazers in Europe and most of Africa can watch during early morning hours local time on Monday the 28th. Unfortunately, folks in Asia and Pacific Ocean will be on the wrong side of the planet when the eclipse is under way. Unlike solar eclipses, lunar ones are safe to watch with the naked eye.
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From Earth, we see the moon get dark and often turn red. This happens because Earth’s atmosphere scatters blue and green light while it bends yellow, orange and red wavelengths toward the moon.
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Romantic Science
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SELENE
by Marsha Moore PANTHEON.org
Selene, the moon goddess, is known for her countless love affairs. The most famous of her loves is the shepard Endymion. Other affairs of Selene’s include involvement with Zeus with whom she had three daughters, and Pan who gave her a herd of white oxen. Some sources report that the Nemean lion, which fell to the earth from the moon was the result of the famous affair of Zeus and Selene. She was involved in many love affairs, however, not as many as her sister, Eos, the dawn. She resembles a young woman with an extremely white face who travels on a silver chariot drawn by two horses.
“Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest of the stars.” —J.R.R. Tolkien 32
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Before Selene’s journey across the night sky she bathes in the sea.
She is often shown riding a horse or a bull. Selene is said to wear robes, carry a torch, and wear a half moon on her head. She was not one of the twelve great gods on Olympus, however she is the moon goddess. After her brother Helios completes his journey across the sky, she begins hers. Selene’s parents are the Titan Hyperion, the sun god, and Theia, the sister of Helios. Some sources report that she is the daughter of the Titan Pallas, Helios, or Zeus. Helius, who is the sun god as well as his father Helios, is the brother of Selene. Eos, the dawn, who is known for her numerous love affairs is the sister of Selene.
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Selene is a favorite of many poets, especially love poets.
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The seduction of Endymion is the love affair that brings Selene the most fame. She fell in love with the shepherd, Endymion, and seduced him while he lie sleeping in a cave. Some sources say Endymion was a king or a hunter, not a shepherd. Her seduction of Endymion resulted in the birth of fifty daughters, one of which was Na xos. Since Selene was so deeply in love with Endymion she asked Zeus to allow him to decide his own fate.
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MOON tarot BY JAN SPILLER TAROT.com
New Moon (waxing/0-45 degrees)
The New Moon is a time best suited for new beginnings! For the first 48 hours following the exact time of the New Moon each month, a window of opportunity opens for making wishes that, if noted, come true in the days and months ahead. There is a tremendous amount of enthusiasm in the atmosphere, making it a great time to go forward and begin projects that you feel instinctively attracted to initiating. Follow your impulses and let yourself make new starts in areas that are important to you.
Disseminating (waning /135-90 degrees) November 20, 2016—This is a tremendous time of transmutation. All of the prior elements are coming together for a final burst of creative output. You have seen a clear view of your own needs and the posture of significant others. Now the accumulation of that input is leading to a deep, core change within you. In this phase, you will naturally be inclined to seek higher guidance so that you can emerge from this transformation successfully. The Disseminating Moon favors sharing what you have learned (and are learning) with others.
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Crescent Moon (waxing/45-90 degrees) During this Moon phase, there is a slight slowing down of enthusiasm due to an emerging desire to produce tangible results from the energy being expended. The issue of values enters into the equation and an urge to tie together the data available so that you can utilize current opportunities. There is still plenty of forward motion, and this is a great time to continue initiating and progressing forward. This Moon phase favors gaining more information and the input of others to further your plans.
Full Moon (waning/180-135 degrees)
A veil of self-absorption is lifted and suddenly you gain access to an unbiased view of others. This is a rare moment when you can see yourself objectively and become aware of whether or not what you want in your heart is actually beginning to manifest in your life. Traditionally, the Full Moon phase stirs emotion, and this is because when you “see” what is happening, you may become upset if you’re experiencing the “same ol’, same ol’” -- rather than the things you would like. If the Full Moon phase is a disappointment, on the next New Moon it’s time to take creative action in the direction of your dreams. First Quarter Moon (waxing/90 °-135 ° )
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MOON tarot
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Half Moon Emotions begin to stir coupled
with recognizing that the new beginnings you are making must also increase personal security to be worthwhile over the long haul. This is a time when it’s appropriate to get in touch with your gut instincts and begin to guide your life more deliberately, with an awareness of using your “sixth sense” as well as your enthusiasm. Obstacles may emerge that require you to reevaluate how to better integrate yourself into your immediate environment.
Gibbous Moon (waxing/135 °-180 °)
Distractions from the outside begin pressing into your world. Analysis is favored, reevaluating all the various factors you are dealing with. It’s a time to process information and effectively integrate your aims with the people in your immediate environment. This is a good time for organizing things. This Moon phase is suited for synthesis: coming up with a practical plan for getting from point A to point B. Adjustment is required
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Balsamic Moon (waning /45 °- 0 °)
This is a time to rest, reevaluate and reflect, pulling back into yourself to reconnect with inner sources of strength. Now is not a time to initiate anything new. It’s a phase suited to spending time with friends and getting in touch with the “big picture.” A window of opportunity exists for seeing your life objectively and becoming aware of what is important to you. At this point, what are your dreams and aspirations? What larger goals can you aspire to that will bring vitality and excitement into your life? This is a time for resting and gaining inner strength to prepare for a new cycle.
Last Quarter Moon (waning/90 °-45°)
The time of reaping is at hand. There is a feeling of completion infused into the atmosphere during the Last Quarter Moon. The opportunity opens to recognize how far you’ve come in various parts of your life. This is not a good time for new beginnings, but rather a reflective period suited to evaluating how you have been using your time and what has been accomplished. Issues of authority may arise. This Moon phase supports taking responsibility for actively tying up the loose ends of projects that are already underway.
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The Moon is drifting away
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from the Earth. The Moon is moving approximately 3.8cm away from our planet every year. It is estimated that it will continue to do so for around 50 billion years. By the time that happens, the Moon will be taking around 47 days to orbit the Earth instead of the current 27.3 days. The moon is the most explored body in our solar system besides Earth, having been visited by numerous spacecraft from multiple space agencies around the world. It’s also the only place besides Earth where human beings have set foot.
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