Surfing the Galaxy---The Moon, The Sun and Time

An article published in The AlterNETive Searcher Issue #6


This article is copyright Hermograph Press 1999 and may not be reproduced in any media without the express written permission of the publisher. A single hard copy printing of this article is allowed per personal use.

February is a lunatic month.

February 1999 has no full moon. This can only happen when either January or March have two full moons, months that contain “blue moons” because they seem to occur about once in a blue moon, whatever that means. Which brings us to the discussion of time. In case you’ve forgotten your elementary school science, our calendars incorporate time as defined by the sun and moon. The Sun forges the year, the moon the month and week. However, the time periods defined by the moon are neither constant nor exactly fitting into the time defined by the Sun (actually the earth’s motion but we’ll ignore that for now!). As the rock group Chicago once sang, does anybody really know what time it is? The answer is yes, and you can find out on the Web.

The main resource is the US Naval Observatory. The USNO literally keeps track of the stars and solar system bodies, their positions, how they move around, where they are expected to go and why when they don’t. They are also the equivalent of the Greenwich meridian people in that they tell everybody else when to adjust their clocks. (In the 1800s they actually dropped a red ball from their tower so that boats in harbor could synchronize their chronometers—else the ships would be calculating incorrect longitudes at sea).

At its Astronomical Applications Page aa.usno.navy.mil you can receive Sunrise, Sunset, Moonrise, Moonset, and Twilight data for any spot on Earth. Other data found includes: 

Complete Sun and Moon Data for One Day      
Table of Sunrise/Sunset, Moonrise 
  /Moonset, or Twilight  Times for an Entire    
  Year  
Phases of the Moon 1990-2005     
Recent and Upcoming Eclipses of the Sun  
  and Moon      
Earth's Seasons - Equinoxes, Solstices, Perihelion, and Aphelion 1992-2005     
Date of Easter
One can get the precise time by a variety of means including a way to get the exact time into your computer’s clock! Call the US Naval Observatory master clock at 900-410-8463, cost is half a dollar for a minute. Or dial up Digital Time for Modems 202-762-1594. At tycho.usno.navy.mil/what1.html you can view realtime clocks. Several really nice Java/HTML clock applications you can use on your server are available, and you can compare your computer's CPU date/time with the USNO computer and see how far behind or ahead you are!

As for the apparent cause of all these timely means, the Physics & Astronomy Department at the University of Iowa provides this Java based tutorial at www-astro.physics.uiowa.edu/~lam/teaching/moon/ that demonstrates lunar phases clearly and logically. A typical demonstration involves a stick figure human on the earth's surface who can be interactively moved as the rotation of the planet is moved, to show how the phases change relative to time and direction.

And the sun….well, you surely know not to actually look at it directly. But here’s some way to keep tabs on the face of ol’ Mr. Sun…. 

 
Mees Solar  Observatory —Visible light images 
www.solar.ifa.hawaii.edu/mees.html  
Big Bear  Solar Observatory — visible light and other colors 
sundog.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/daily.cgi 
NASA Solar Data  Analysis Center (SOHO) — Spectacular images from a probe in space 
between sun and earth. 
umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/sdac.html 
 

 
 



	




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