[OT] Her in the Sky
 

Even before I knew the word 'witch' or 'pagan' I used to talk to the moon
(and Antares, my favourite star), have always looked out for Her in the sky.
My Full Moon ritual is barely a ritual, but I've shared it with the Yowlet,
and now we both go out and howl and the moon when She's at her brightest.
I've always been innately aware of her Cycle, and would be at a loss without
Her in the sky.

Last night was the first clear and not bitterly-cold-and-howling-a-gale
night since I got my telescope. Its a crappy telescope, I admit, barely
better than binoculars, but it was free, and I've wanted but haven't been
able to afford one since, oh, I don't know, for as long as I've been talking
to Her in the Sky.

I started off trying to get a view of Jupiter, but gave up in frustration
after an hour or so. After another hour or so of cursing and muttering about
bad design, I finally got my first ever glimpse of Her under magnification.
I was astonished, astounded and more deeply in love than ever.

After fiddling with the eyepieces some more, I settled on 'medium'
magnification (and sorry, i don't know what magnification it was, I don't
know about the technical side of the telescope) - high magnification didn't
allow a stable enough image, with the wobbly tripod and worn out mounts.
But medium magnification allowed me to see the craters, and the seas,
allowed me to watch contentedly as she slowly 'sailed' past my little
viewing aperture.

Joel dragged me in at 11:30pm and told me off for staying out so late on
work night and for being out in such frigid temperatures with just t-shirt
and jeans. I had not noticed the time pass, nor the temperature drop. I am
in love all over again.

Yowie

--
If you're paddling upstream in a canoe and a wheel falls off, how many
pancakes can you fit in a doghouse? None, icecream doesn't have bones.

[OT] Her in the Sky
 

On Tue, 15 Jul 2008 07:44:41 +1000, Yowie wrote:

Even before I knew the word 'witch' or 'pagan' I used to talk to the moon
(and Antares, my favourite star), have always looked out for Her in the sky.
My Full Moon ritual is barely a ritual, but I've shared it with the Yowlet,
and now we both go out and howl and the moon when She's at her brightest.
I've always been innately aware of her Cycle, and would be at a loss without
Her in the sky.

She is indeed beautiful, isn't she? My own personal rituals evolved into
much the same - Moon-centered, and frequently led to me just talking to
Her.

As for watching through the telescope - some time if you get a chance to
look at high magnification, on the lower left limb (between 7 and
8 o'clock), there are a few craters in a perfect line, appearing
larger/smaller/smaller still with the smallest one right on the edge such
that it's crater walls project beyond the edge of the Moon herself, so
that when you first view them they look like a pyramid on the moon! I
don't recall whether refracting scopes invert images; my reflector did, so
the interesting craters appeared around 2 o'clock on Her face. It's an
interesting visual effect when you first see it.

Her in the Sky
 

On Jul 14, 4:56*pm, hopitus wrote:
On Jul 14, 3:44 pm, "Yowie" wrote:





Even before I knew the word 'witch' or 'pagan' I used to talk to the moon
(and Antares, my favourite star), have always looked out for Her in the sky.
My Full Moon ritual is barely a ritual, but I've shared it with the Yowlet,
and now we both go out and howl and the moon when She's at her brightest.

[OT] Her in the Sky
 

"Yowie" wrote in message
...
Even before I knew the word 'witch' or 'pagan' I used to talk to the
moon (and Antares, my favourite star), have always looked out for
Her in the sky. My Full Moon ritual is barely a ritual, but I've
shared it with the Yowlet, and now we both go out and howl and the
moon when She's at her brightest. I've always been innately aware of
her Cycle, and would be at a loss without Her in the sky.

Last night was the first clear and not
bitterly-cold-and-howling-a-gale night since I got my telescope. Its
a crappy telescope, I admit, barely better than binoculars, but it
was free, and I've wanted but haven't been able to afford one since,
oh, I don't know, for as long as I've been talking to Her in the
Sky.

I started off trying to get a view of Jupiter, but gave up in
frustration after an hour or so. After another hour or so of cursing
and muttering about bad design, I finally got my first ever glimpse
of Her under magnification. I was astonished, astounded and more
deeply in love than ever.

After fiddling with the eyepieces some more, I settled on 'medium'
magnification (and sorry, i don't know what magnification it was, I
don't know about the technical side of the telescope) - high
magnification didn't allow a stable enough image, with the wobbly
tripod and worn out mounts. But medium magnification allowed me to
see the craters, and the seas, allowed me to watch contentedly as
she slowly 'sailed' past my little viewing aperture.

Joel dragged me in at 11:30pm and told me off for staying out so
late on work night and for being out in such frigid temperatures
with just t-shirt and jeans. I had not noticed the time pass, nor
the temperature drop. I am in love all over again.


There are web sites that have star maps. You can tell them where you
live and you will get a map of the sky for the day and time.

But first to get familiar with the moon and the scope you have
available.

Best mistake we ever made. When Charlie and I first got married, we
were shopping for Christmas presents for my sisters kids. We picked
out an inexpensive telescope for her son. Only to find at the
checkout we had actually picked up a much more expensive one. The
store was crowded, the lines were long, so we decided 'oh what the
heck' and bought it anyway.

My now fifty year old nephew is still quite the amateur astronomer.

I wait every fall for Orion to come back.

Jo

[OT] Her in the Sky
 

Jofirey wrote:
I wait every fall for Orion to come back.

Every fall we rent a cabin near the Lost Maples area here in Texas. One
of our favorite activities is sit by a fire and watch Orion come up over
the ridge across the river. It's magical!
And every year we swear we're going to buy a telescope and bring it out.
Perhaps this year... :)

--
Victor M. Martinez
Owned and operated by the Fantastic Seven (TM)
Send your spam he
Email me he

[OT] Her in the Sky
 

"Victor Martinez" wrote in message
...
Jofirey wrote:
I wait every fall for Orion to come back.

Every fall we rent a cabin near the Lost Maples area here in Texas.
One of our favorite activities is sit by a fire and watch Orion come
up over the ridge across the river. It's magical!
And every year we swear we're going to buy a telescope and bring it
out. Perhaps this year... :)

--
That picture is just as clear and lovely as any photograph Tom takes
with his camera.

Jo

[OT] Her in the Sky
 

Daniel Mahoney wrote:
On Tue, 15 Jul 2008 07:44:41 +1000, Yowie wrote:

Even before I knew the word 'witch' or 'pagan' I used to talk to the
moon (and Antares, my favourite star), have always looked out for
Her in the sky. My Full Moon ritual is barely a ritual, but I've
shared it with the Yowlet, and now we both go out and howl and the
moon when She's at her brightest. I've always been innately aware of
her Cycle, and would be at a loss without Her in the sky.

She is indeed beautiful, isn't she? My own personal rituals evolved
into much the same - Moon-centered, and frequently led to me just
talking to Her.

As for watching through the telescope - some time if you get a chance
to look at high magnification, on the lower left limb (between 7 and
8 o'clock), there are a few craters in a perfect line, appearing
larger/smaller/smaller still with the smallest one right on the edge
such that it's crater walls project beyond the edge of the Moon
herself, so that when you first view them they look like a pyramid on
the moon! I don't recall whether refracting scopes invert images; my
reflector did, so the interesting craters appeared around 2 o'clock
on Her face. It's an interesting visual effect when you first see it.

The odd thing about Australia (and hte rest of hte southern hemisphere) is
our moon is upseide down, and the phases go ( 0 ) rather than ) 0 ( like
yours do. So I have no idea where '2 o'clock' might be - and whether my
telescope turns the image upseide down. Still, its something to discover for
myself, and I look forward to finding them.

Yowie

[OT] Her in the Sky
 

The odd thing about Australia (and hte rest of hte southern hemisphere) is
our moon is upseide down, and the phases go ( 0 ) rather than ) 0 ( like
yours do. So I have no idea where '2 o'clock' might be - and whether my
telescope turns the image upseide down. Still, its something to discover for
myself, and I look forward to finding them.

Yowie

Hmmm, I never thought of that. When I say "2 oclock", I mean that for
me, through an inverting telescope, the crater formation is at the upper
left limb (where 2 o'clock would be on the face of a clock). Since we
don't know if your telescope inverts, it could be either 2 or 8 o'clock.
And that's just approximate, so it will give you an excuse to look all
around the visible edge of the full moon :)

Dan

[OT] Her in the Sky
 

Yowie wrote:

The odd thing about Australia (and hte rest of hte southern hemisphere) is
our moon is upseide down, and the phases go ( 0 ) rather than ) 0 ( like
yours do.

It's not the moon that's upside down, it's you guys. :) (Kidding :))

But that's interesting, and it makes sense, since the earth's shadow would
getting larger and smaller in the opposite direction.

My education about celestial bodies was quite pitiful. Considering that
I was interested in astronomy, I didn't even know which direction the
moon waxed and waned. A friend of mine taught it to me about 5 years ago,
complete with a handy mnemonic. (It wouldn't work for most of us, since
the words are in Russian and the letters representing the orientation of
the crescent moon are Cyrillic - but for some reason I remember that better
than anything I learned in childhood!)

--
Joyce ^..^

(To email me, remove the X's from my user name.)

[OT] Her in the Sky
 

Daniel Mahoney wrote:

Hmmm, I never thought of that. When I say "2 oclock", I mean that for
me, through an inverting telescope, the crater formation is at the upper
left limb (where 2 o'clock would be on the face of a clock). Since we
don't know if your telescope inverts, it could be either 2 or 8 o'clock.

Wait, would that be 8 o'clock or 4 o'clock? If it just flips it over
(ie, as a mirror image across the horizontal diameter), then 2:00 would
become 4:00. But if it actually rotates the image of the moon by 180
degrees, then you're right, it would be 8:00.

Joyce - knows very little about telescopes, but does know about image
transformations!

(To email me, remove the X's from my user name.)

[OT] Her in the Sky
 

Wait, would that be 8 o'clock or 4 o'clock? If it just flips it over
(ie, as a mirror image across the horizontal diameter), then 2:00 would
become 4:00. But if it actually rotates the image of the moon by 180
degrees, then you're right, it would be 8:00.

Joyce - knows very little about telescopes, but does know about image
transformations!

(To email me, remove the X's from my user name.)

Man I'm batting .1000 tonight...

2o'clock would be at the upper RIGHT, of course.

[OT] Her in the Sky
 

[OT] Her in the Sky
 

Yowie wrote:

wrote:

moon waxed and waned. A friend of mine taught it to me about 5 years
ago, complete with a handy mnemonic. (It wouldn't work for most of
us, since the words are in Russian and the letters representing the
orientation of the crescent moon are Cyrillic - but for some reason I
remember that better than anything I learned in childhood!)

Please share anyway? (With translation, if possible)

It's slightly complicated and hard to do in email, especially since
I use fixed fonts and probably many of you have proportional fonts on
your newsreaders, so it will look weird. But I'll give it a shot.

If you took the letter "C" and added a vertical stem to the left of it,
you'd get something that looked a bit like a "k": |c . And if you took
a *backwards* C and put a vertical stem to the left of that, you'd get
something that looked like the letter "p".

It turns out that the Russian word for "waxing" starts with the Cyrillic
letter "p". When the moon is waxing, it's filling in on the left side,
and the shadow is shaped like a backwards C. When the moon is waning,
the shadow is getting bigger and bigger on the *right* side (as the
visible moon gets smaller), and is shaped like a regular C.

I don't remember the actual Russian words - I could ask my friend again
if you want. Or maybe someone here speaks Russian and can provide them?

Summary: You have to use the letter C, forwards and backwards, to
imitate the shape of the shadow as the moon wanes or waxes, respectively.
Then you have to add a vertical stem to the left of the appropriate
symbol (C or backwards C), to get the "P" or "K". Those are the letters
which start the Russian words meaning waning and waxing. Simple, eh? :)

And then on top of all that, you have to reverse it since you're in the
Southern hemisphere! Are you sure it's worth it? :)

--
Joyce ^..^

(To email me, remove the X's from my user name.)

[OT] Her in the Sky
 

"Yowie" wrote in message
...
Daniel Mahoney wrote:
On Tue, 15 Jul 2008 07:44:41 +1000, Yowie wrote:

Even before I knew the word 'witch' or 'pagan' I used to talk to
the
moon (and Antares, my favourite star), have always looked out for
Her in the sky. My Full Moon ritual is barely a ritual, but I've
shared it with the Yowlet, and now we both go out and howl and the
moon when She's at her brightest. I've always been innately aware
of
her Cycle, and would be at a loss without Her in the sky.

She is indeed beautiful, isn't she? My own personal rituals evolved
into much the same - Moon-centered, and frequently led to me just
talking to Her.

As for watching through the telescope - some time if you get a
chance
to look at high magnification, on the lower left limb (between 7
and
8 o'clock), there are a few craters in a perfect line, appearing
larger/smaller/smaller still with the smallest one right on the
edge
such that it's crater walls project beyond the edge of the Moon
herself, so that when you first view them they look like a pyramid
on
the moon! I don't recall whether refracting scopes invert images;
my
reflector did, so the interesting craters appeared around 2 o'clock
on Her face. It's an interesting visual effect when you first see
it.

The odd thing about Australia (and hte rest of hte southern
hemisphere) is our moon is upseide down, and the phases go ( 0 )
rather than ) 0 ( like yours do. So I have no idea where '2 o'clock'
might be - and whether my telescope turns the image upseide down.
Still, its something to discover for myself, and I look forward to
finding them.

Yowie


OK, guys, I'm not good at this.

So what does the moon do at the equator?

I just can't wrap my mind around this one.

Jo

[OT] Her in the Sky
 

wrote:

Wait, would that be 8 o'clock or 4 o'clock? If it just flips it over
(ie, as a mirror image across the horizontal diameter), then 2:00 would
become 4:00. But if it actually rotates the image of the moon by 180
degrees, then you're right, it would be 8:00.

You people are just being silly. If it's 2 o'clock in Iowa then it's 5
o'clock in eastern Australia.
--

Wayne M.

[OT] Her in the Sky
 

kirjoitti:
Yowie wrote:

The odd thing about Australia (and hte rest of hte southern hemisphere) is
our moon is upseide down, and the phases go ( 0 ) rather than ) 0 ( like
yours do.

It's not the moon that's upside down, it's you guys. :) (Kidding :))

But that's interesting, and it makes sense, since the earth's shadow would
getting larger and smaller in the opposite direction.

My education about celestial bodies was quite pitiful. Considering that
I was interested in astronomy, I didn't even know which direction the
moon waxed and waned. A friend of mine taught it to me about 5 years ago,
complete with a handy mnemonic. (It wouldn't work for most of us, since
the words are in Russian and the letters representing the orientation of
the crescent moon are Cyrillic - but for some reason I remember that better
than anything I learned in childhood!)


My memory help for when the moon is waxing is tied to Swedish, but it
works for English too. The moon is waxing, or "coming", when it
resembles a comma, or ).

--
Christine in Laitila, Finland
christal63 (at) gmail (dot) com
photos: http://s208.photobucket.com/albums/bb108/christal63/
photos: http://community.webshots.com/user/chkr63

[OT] Her in the Sky
 

wrote in message
...

... maybe someone here speaks Russian...

Russian Blue? I'd heard they had all teleported to The Mouser :-)

Incidentally, the Captain's Log transcripts have stopped
appearing! Has the voyage finished?

--
MatSav

[OT] Her in the Sky
 

"MatSav" matthew | dot | savage | at | dsl | dot | pipex | dot | com wrote
in message ...
wrote in message
...

... maybe someone here speaks Russian...

Russian Blue? I'd heard they had all teleported to The Mouser :-)

Incidentally, the Captain's Log transcripts have stopped appearing! Has
the voyage finished?


No. However the fat wench is dealing with some real life issues concerning
her better half. I'll make her get back to work ASAP, STAT, and so forth.

Cap'n Pine Cone esq.

[OT] Her in the Sky
 

"Jofirey" wrote in message
...


OK, guys, I'm not good at this.

So what does the moon do at the equator?

I just can't wrap my mind around this one.

Jo

Usually the Tango or Rumba. It depends on a variety of factors, like the
phases of the sun, tides, time of the month, what Janice told Sally about
her date with Ganymede, and a lot of issues that Moons have to deal with.

Pam S.

[OT] Her in the Sky
 

"tanadashoes" wrote in message
m...

"Jofirey" wrote in message
...


OK, guys, I'm not good at this.

So what does the moon do at the equator?

I just can't wrap my mind around this one.

Jo

Usually the Tango or Rumba. It depends on a variety of factors,
like the phases of the sun, tides, time of the month, what Janice
told Sally about her date with Ganymede, and a lot of issues that
Moons have to deal with.

Pam S.


That was kind of what I figured.

Jo

[OT] Her in the Sky
 

On 2008-07-15, Christine K wrote:
kirjoitti:
Yowie wrote:

The odd thing about Australia (and hte rest of hte southern hemisphere) is
our moon is upseide down, and the phases go ( 0 ) rather than ) 0 ( like
yours do.

It's not the moon that's upside down, it's you guys. :) (Kidding :))

But that's interesting, and it makes sense, since the earth's shadow would
getting larger and smaller in the opposite direction.

My education about celestial bodies was quite pitiful. Considering that
I was interested in astronomy, I didn't even know which direction the
moon waxed and waned. A friend of mine taught it to me about 5 years ago,
complete with a handy mnemonic. (It wouldn't work for most of us, since
the words are in Russian and the letters representing the orientation of
the crescent moon are Cyrillic - but for some reason I remember that better
than anything I learned in childhood!)


My memory help for when the moon is waxing is tied to Swedish, but it
works for English too. The moon is waxing, or "coming", when it
resembles a comma, or ).


The Moon waxes until it is full and then it wanes.

Bud

[OT] Her in the Sky
 

kirjoitti:
On 2008-07-15, Christine K wrote:
My memory help for when the moon is waxing is tied to Swedish, but it
works for English too. The moon is waxing, or "coming", when it
resembles a comma, or ).

The Moon waxes until it is full and then it wanes.

Bud


Yes... Did I say something different???
At least what I meant to do was to recite a memory help, which I use
when I look at the moon crescent and am not sure if it's waxing or
waning. So when it looks like a comma, it's waxing...at least on the
northern hemisphere...

--
Christine in Laitila, Finland
christal63 (at) gmail (dot) com
photos: http://s208.photobucket.com/albums/bb108/christal63/
photos: http://community.webshots.com/user/chkr63