12 o'clock high

reply to post by eriktheawful

As pointed out by usmc0311, the moon moves in it's orbit, by a small amount. But that small amount is more than enough to make the moon seem to move a large difference to your eye.

Again, this isn't about movement of the moon. This is about 12 o'clock. I had to put my neck completely back in order to see the moon. It would have been better and more enjoyable to get a lawn chair and lay it out flat and view the moon straight up from there. I don't recall this scenario from before.

It's like the eclipse you were talking about. If that's the one where the moon turned red, I remember it well. I was in a board meeting and asked the members if they'd like to step outside to view the eclipse before we continued. We did and we looked up to see the eclipse but we did not look at 12 o'clock. It was easy viewing and we didn't have to contort our necks to see it. Because some of the members were quite elderly I don't think standing in a position with your neck all the way back for the duration of the eclipse would have been something enjoyable for them.

reply to post by luxordelphi


You all were in a board meeting at almost 2 am in the morning? wow. (that was the time for totality on this one).

Here is a paper for you to read (and anyone else that is curious) that talks about the moon traversing our night sky, and the Lunar Standstills.

Dr. Young, University of Mass.

It's a great paper as Dr. Young keeps it simple and explains the moon's position in the sky during the seasons. There are links on her paper that show charts of the Lunar Extreme's.

As she says in her paper: You see the sun progress from being low in the southern sky during the winter, to going high in the sky during the summer and back again, over the course of the year. The moon does the exact same thing only it does this in 1 month.

March 29th had the moon at a +21 deg 53' declination:

Moon Table 2011 - 2013

As for never seeing the moon like that before.....:spreading my hands helplessly:......all I can say is that I have many times. Maybe you just never noticed or happen to look up when it is like that before? Someone like me that spends every night it's not raining out looking at the stars and moon might notice it more.

reply to post by eriktheawful

I'm really not following what your post has to do with the 90 degree angle that the moon was at last night from my location. Are you saying that it should be at 12 o'clock high from 37 degrees north. I'm familiar with Dr. Young's explanation of the lunar standstills but mystified in how this relates to the 90 degree angle of the moon from my location. Also how does that relate to the 90 degree angles that Jupiter, Venus and Mars are currently sporting from my location? How would it relate to the ecliptic at 90 degrees from my location? They're all at 12 o'clock - straight up.

reply to post by luxordelphi


Okay, I think I understand where you are coming from now.

You think by craning your neck and looking straight up that you are seeing the moon right at what you call 90 deg (astronomers have different measurements for that).

However, while you might think that is what you are seeing, that is not actually what is going on. When you stand and tilt your head back, and look directly over head at the night sky, you are looking close to what you call 90 deg or 12 o'clock high.
However, your eyes can not be sure of that due to the fact that by holding your head in the position, and looking, you loose all reference to the horizon. 80 deg can look like it's at 90 simply because while you're looking straight up, you've lost the terrestrial reference.
The only way you can be absolutely sure (no mater how good you are at tennis) is by having a precision interment that you can measure that angle at (such as a telescope or a sextant ).

Here is a video I just made using Stellarium and posted it on YouTub. I placed the time at about 8:30pm, and have the location at the 37th parallel on the east coast of the US. I set the date to 12/26/2011. I then started to increase the date by 1 day per click. Watch how the moon moves over each day, you can see how close to "90 deg" or "12 o'clock it gets, and again, if your eyes can't see the horizon, you'll loose your reference.

(oh, btw for those talking about Orion. Check it out. All the stars are moving with the date changing like they should, but not rising towards the north at all):

reply to post by eriktheawful

I got you. So you're saying that the moon, Jupiter, Mars and Venus could never really be at 90 degrees straight up, 12 o'clock, from my location. So if that's what I'm seeing it's a trick of the light and lack of a horizon for comparison and that the angle of my neck is not a good measuring tool? And you're saying this because what I'm saying I'm seeing is not possible - right?

Tonight the moon is not straight up. It's almost straight up but a bit off. I know this because my neck is not as contorted when I'm looking at it. It's still not as low in the sky as it should be from my location but it's no longer at 12 o'clock. So would, say, 88 or 87 degrees from the horizon be ok for my location?

reply to post by luxordelphi


Yes, that's what I'm saying: your neck and eyes are good tools when it comes to approximation, but understand that what your eyes and mind thinks it sees can be fooled, or off.

Human being's FOV (Field Of View) is 175 deg by 160 deg, so when you crane your neck and look straight up, you loose the horizon, and your reference for angle of declination. In order to see it still, you'd have to have a FOV of more than 180 deg.

The Naked Eye

I'm sure you've seen Optical Illusions before. It's simply how our eyes and brain are "wired".

A lot of times, making a measurement with your eyes can get you in the ball park so to speak. Like holding out a finger on either hand and "guess-t-mating" a foot or 12 inches. You can get close, or even very close, but exactly right on would be a very rare thing.

Also, as you can see from my video: if the moon were to be out of place, I can tell you that there would be no hiding it from hundreds of millions of amateur astronomers. They'd be yelling their heads off about it. including me.

reply to post by eriktheawful


Thanks again for this info. I looked again tonight, and seemed to be the same as last night...

reply to post by eriktheawful

So according to:

Naked eye in astronomy

The vertical can be estimated to about 2°

and according to the field of view I would be well within those parameters measuring something between the horizon and 90 degrees - 12 o'clock high, straight up. So coupled with the angle of my neck and its' knowledge of how bent it has to be from my location in order to see the moon, I should be all set to within 2 degrees of accuracy.

I read through the illusions and one of them seems to apply here but not to me.

Cognitive illusions

Cognitive illusions are assumed to arise by interaction with assumptions about the world, leading to "unconscious inferences"

Our brain makes sense of shapes and symbols putting them together like a jigsaw puzzle, formulating that which isn't there to that which is believable.

The illusions arise when the "judgments" implied in the unconscious analysis of the scene are in conflict with reasoned considerations about it.

So this is basically saying that because we know that the moon and planets cannot be at 12 o'clock straight up from my location, we wouldn't see them there even if they were there. We would automatically move them to a more reasonable location in our minds.

All of that would have been ok except for the neck thing. I had read this book a long time ago that told me that if I wanted to play a killer game of tennis all I needed to do was trust that my body knew exactly how to do it. So when I found myself in this totally unnatural position for viewing the moon from my location, I stopped and considered what might be wrong. Things didn't feel right. It was almost painful. It was during that process of figuring out what was wrong with my position that I realized that the moon was at 12 o'clock straight up even though that's not possible.

reply to post by luxordelphi


By any chance do you have a friend or aquaintance that owns a computerized telescope. If so I would sugest having him run his software at the exact time you feel that something is off. I am still not quite sure what you are referring to but without being there with you while your seeing it I cannot be sure. Also you may be able to contact an amature astronomer group in your area who would be willing to help you out.

Originally posted by luxordelphi
The past two nights I've been looking at the sky.

I have to ask...after reading this whole thread so far...before 'the last two nights,' when did you last look at the sky at night?

reply to post by usmc0311

What I'm saying is really just that if you're standing in a lobby with a chandelier hanging from the ceiling several stories above you...and if you go and stand under the chandelier...you know it's directly overhead at 12 o'clock high and straight up.

Same with Venus and Mars and Jupiter and the moon. You know when they're straight up. And you know when they're not. It's the chandelier principle. Ordinarily they would rise and make an arc across the sky and, from my location, the high point on that arc would be considerably below straight up at 12 o'clock. Like tonight, for instance, the moon was 2 or 3 degrees below 12 o'clock straight up at its' highest point. Mars, on the other hand, was off the 12 o'clock position by a bit more than the moon although I didn't catch it quite at the highest point so I can't say by exactly how much...just that as it was descending, it was a bit lower than the moon was.

I'm kind of addicted to observatories, architecturally, so take every opportunity to visit. There has been quite an evolution in the security presence and the addition of personnel walking the floor 'to answer questions' is all very interesting but truly the subject of another thread.

reply to post by luxordelphi

I'm kind of addicted to observatories, architecturally, so take every opportunity to visit. There has been quite an evolution in the security presence and the addition of personnel walking the floor 'to answer questions' is all very interesting but truly the subject of another thread.

I agree with you on that as I have experienced that myself. I'm actually thinking of joining a local club that has access to some very nice equipment and a nice observatorie so I can look at a few things for myself with good equipment.

reply to post by luxordelphi


As usmc said: contact a local astronomy club or group. You don't have to claim to them that you think something is wrong or anything like that. Simply tell them you're curious to know, and ask them what the declination of the moon is from the South the next time you have to hold your head up to see it like that.

If they also notice that something is wrong, then what you've done is backed up what you think you're seeing (astronomers do this all the time when they think they've discovered something new in the sky. Observations have to be confirmed.).

If nothing else, you might enjoy yourself with them, and pick up on how to spot things in the sky, what they are, and how a lot of the equipment works. And since Jupiter, Venus and Mars are in the sky, you'll get to see them through a telescope.

Originally posted by cloaked4u

Originally posted by eriktheawful
I'm at the 36 parallel, and I can tell you that I've seen the moon almost directly overhead many, many, many times.

I even watched a lunar eclipse here in 1993 and it was directly over head.

I've been a amateur astronomer with my own telescopes for several decades now. I own several telescopes both old and new. The old ones require a polar alignment in order to "dial in" both Right Ascension and Declination to center on faint, deep space objects. The new scopes I have use a computerized "Go To" feature, however, even with the "Go To" feature, you still have to point at two different objects in the sky and tell the system what they are (I normally uses Polaris as one of these objects), and then the system can align itself.

The point I'm making is this: if our world were to be "off" on it's axis, then when I do these alignments, and then dial in the coordinates of a faint object, like say the Ringed Nebula, when I look in my telescope, it wouldn't be there. I would have to adjust the RA and Dec, and I, to this day do not have to do this. Everything is still in the correct place.

Better yet, another reason I do the polar alignments is so that I can track these objects to do astrophotography with my telescopes. If they did not align correctly, NONE of my shots would turn out, and would be smeared or streaked.

So I'm not sure what you think your eyes are telling you, however I can tell you that mine are showing the night sky, just as it has been for several decades now.

And yes, the moon can be almost over head where we are. I have spent many a night with my telescope pointed almost over head, but while the telescope LOOKS like it is, it's never directly at 90 for that.

In other words: craning your neck and looking up is not exactly a good way to measure something. No mater how well you might hit a baseball.

edit on 31-3-2012 by eriktheawful because: spelling

oh really. Tell me then because i must be confused. When i was young the stars/planets out there, looked white. So tell me what is that big bright orange light in the sky and it is the only orange one out there,but don't believe me go look for yourself. In MN at about12 to 1 am , i look up in the sky and there it is, the only orange light in the sky.

Probably Mars(orange light)