#gilbertandsulivan

I am newly returned to a hobby of my youth amateur astronomy; so I went out on Wednesday night to photograph the super worm equinox moon. What does that mean? First, the moon was super because the full moon occurred when it was closest in its orbit to Earth. Second, it was the March full moon; so the worm moon, the first full moon of spring. You know bringing out the worms in the freshly thawed ground and all that. Wish they had called it the robin moon, instead of the yucky worm moon. Third, the full moon occurred on the night of the equinox when the moon cross the ecliptic. It was, we were warned, the last super moon of the year; wouldn’t want to miss that, however cold it was outside

I will share here a photograph of this super worm equinox moon. Notably, I took it with a hand-held, image stabilized, 640 mm lens with an ISO of 1600 at f/8.0 at 1/3200 sec.

Everything in astronomy is like that . “The next time you see that, you’ll already be dead,” is the common refrain. So you schlep out, and schlep your telescope out to see it, whatever it is. My favorite was waiting all those years to see Halley’s comet in 1986, which was a big disappointment; though I did see it. The next one will be in 2062. Sorry to say that I’m pretty sure I won’t be around for that. Which is also roughly when they predict that we will have computers with the processing power of the human race. Now that might be worth hanging around for, were it not for the prediction that by then global warming will have caused the demise of all the coffee growing places on Earth. A world without coffee? Yikes.

This is a lot like those silly date games. In 1961, Junior Scholastic alerted me that this was last time until 6009 that the year would be the same right side up and upside down. Wow, so long? I mean the last one was 1881, a mere eighty years prior. Needless to say, there is a word for this, a strobogrammatic year! Younger people may remember the dawn of the millennium on 01-01-01. That was followed the next year with 02-02-02. The party ended for almost another century with 12-12-12.

Then, of course, there is Pi Day every March 14th. That is 3-14.  On March 12, 2009 the US Congress passed a non-binding resolution officially recognizing Pi Day. Congress agreed to something? I point that out nostalgically. And you may remember super Pi day, which carried the absurdity out to five digits on 3-14-15. 

The significance of all of this kind of thing is reminiscent of Gilbert and Sulivan’s Ruddigore, namely

This particularly rapid, unintelligible patter            Isn't generally heard, and if it is it doesn't matter,            This particularly rapid, unintelligible patter            Isn't generally heard, and if it is it doesn't matter,            matter, matter, matter, matter, matter,            matter, matter, matter, matter, matter!