It’s too late for those of you in the UK, but here in the U.S., if you’re awake (and you should be: time to unwrap presents!), go out and look at the Moon. For today we have the first full moon on Christmas since 1977, when Jimmy Carter was President. In fact, it was on that exact day that Charlie Chaplin died in Switzerland.
You won’t see another full moon on Christmas till 2034.
The Moon was lovely as I walked to work (I’m putting in only a few hours today), and I photographed it over the Divinity School tower on my iPhone. It’s grainy, of course, as it was dark and I zoomed in a bit:
Take the rest of the day off, Bob Cratchit.
I saw it last night!! Brilliant!! Happy Coynezaa!!
I did admire the moon at 3 a.m. when turning to bed. One thing is sure: if Jerry and me were living in the same place, we would not meet too often, our circadian rythms being incompatible…
would have been perfect over a snow-covered landscape. That certainly is not to be here in PA, where the roses, forsythias and violets are blooming.
Last night we went out and allowed our eyes to adapt. The amazing thing about a full moon like that is the brightness of the grounds, with trees and lawn furniture casting sharp shadows.
Yes, one can almost make out colors beneath it!
The colors are all there, just not bright enough for your ‘cone’ cells to operate. So your monochrome ‘rod’ cells do it all.
Daniel Rutter explained it well (with moonlight photo) in this post:
http://www.dansdata.com/danletters205.htm
I had a vaguely analogous experience, only with the more sensitive peripheral vision, one night in Rarotonga in 1977. It was a moonless, overcast night, pre-street-lights, there were no lights anywhere and I had to walk 3 miles home to my flat at 2 a.m.
The only light was starlight filtering through the clouds. If I looked straight up at the sky, even with my eyes fully dark-adapted, I could detect nothing at all. All I could detect was a vague dimness at the edge of my vision. Fortunately the road was lined with trees, so long as I kept the vague not-quite-pitch-blackness above me, I knew I was in the middle of the road. If a truck had been parked across the road (unlikely in Rarotonga) I would have walked straight into it.
Fortunately it was a fine night, so an interesting and not unpleasant experience.
cr
“The colors are all there…”
Well, I didn’t really think they’d gone away. 😉 And I know about rod & cone cells. That is still a very fun link, though! Sometime I’ve got to try taking a picture like that!
Your walk reminded me of a very similar experience I had on an OTS course in Costa Rica. My research group for some reason was out on a pitch-black night, down a road quite far from camp on the Osa Peninsula, and the jeep died. This was 1972, so no cell phones. The five of us decided the only thing to do was walk for it, so we linked arms and tried to walk down the middle of the (slightly less black) road as it wound through the (impenetrably black) rainforest. It was a steamy hot night, so the other girl & I were wearing our bathing suit tops and shorts. Of course, we all started coming up with scenarios of walking into a tapir, or stepping on a fer-de-lance, etc….when suddenly I walked right into a wet leafy branch of some sort that struck me right in my bare midriff! I screamed & jumped about a mile…
I guessed you’d know about rod & cone cells.
But I think there’s an intuitive temptation to think that moonlight is somehow monochromatic white (since that’s what you see). It takes some thought to realise that the colours must still be there.
Something I have noticed is that reds ‘fade out’ long before blues in dim light. If you have a red shirt and an equally bright blue shirt and a white shirt hanging up together, as you dim the light the red shirt will go black, while the blue shirt will look as bright as the white one. Obviously a feature of the colour response of our eyes.
Um, tapirs I know nothing of, would walking into one be bad?
cr
It is not too late in the UK, the moon will rise just after sunset and be high in the sky for most of the night.
It was cloudy here. 🙁 I’m hoping to see it tonight!
Is it just me, or does the moon over Divinity tower looks like the Eye of Sauron?
Shhhh, you’re not meant to notice!
The furnace of Mount Doom is hidden in the basketball court.
Divinity Tower? It’s obviously an angel!
cr
Considering what one or other angels of the lord did that resulted in the name “Passover” … is that a great improvement?
Was that all that flaming sword stuff? Very Cecil B deMille…?
I never said angels had to be *good*.
(Actually, a flaming sword would be quite impractical I think, and put one at a definite disadvantage compared with a good sword of the conventional sort.
I’m probably rambling, I don’t know biblical mythology very well)
cr
I suspect that Cecil B. deMille used more than the BuyBile as a source book. There were lots of people high on laudanum and other opioids through the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries who created some quite bizarre constructions out of whole new deranged cloth. IIRC, the BileBuy-ers Guide To Invective (“Buy Bile” to it’s few friends) only mentions that a “flaming sword” was placed at the exit to the Garden of Eden to prevent re-entry.
Now THERE is an idea for DisneyWombat and other such projectile-vomit inducing “attractions”.
The lights are disturbing… Guess professor wasn’t thinking about a perfect moon shot when he shot the picture… But I will watching the moon tonight because of this picture. Happy holidays, professor! 🙂
No, I did that on purpose, noticing that the moon mimicked the street lights.
And it is very beautiful, even if grainy. Glad to see this version as I missed the real thing.
Will try to see it tonight.