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Science Have you ever seen the moon like this?
- Posted on September 9, 2011 at 5:59pm by
Liz Klimas
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When you take 983 wide-angle shots of the Moon’s north poll and stitch them together, you get this.
(Photo: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University )
As reported by Space.com, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which has been making its way around the Moon since 2009, took the images. Although the image shows the craters spiraling outward from the poll, Mark Robinson, primary investigator of the team, said it’s an optical allusion:
“Imagine a series of very narrow pie slices collected 12 times each day, one after another,” Robinson told Life’s Little Mysteries, a sister site to SPACE.com. “It takes roughly 360 slices to fill in the whole pie. Each day the sun direction is progressing around the moon, thus the direction that the sun is striking the surface changes. So the shadow directions slowly progress around the moon, thus leading to the illusion.”
Fun fact: The moon only tilts on its axis at 1.54 degrees (Earth: 23.5 degrees). Because of this, some parts of the moon don’t ever see sunlight. The dark areas you see in the deep craters around the poll are probably always dark
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deedledee
Posted on September 11, 2011 at 10:01amI also, despise such foolish errors. yes I agree there should be a proofreader. but with all that Glenn is doing in such a short period of time, this is the least of his worries. at least the content is good and true. not lies and falsehoods one after another. as everything settles down and has a rythm I am sure things will improve in the petty things that one wants to complain about.
Report Post »Observer
Posted on September 12, 2011 at 7:07amDeedledee slow down take a deep breathe and pause. Ok deep breathes now. Heart rate down now? The Blaze are only reporting a news story. They are not writing a story. Go to Life’s little mysteries and read the original story. Same as this story. You need to go to the source that this story is based on and if that one is wrong please don’t blame this story for the that story if that story is wrong. You are blaming the messenger again and not the message. Get your life togeather and have a good day……..the colour is blue.
Report Post »Volfie
Posted on September 10, 2011 at 2:53pmI understand that The Blaze is a start-up news aggregator site. Regardless of that, Glenn Beck often laments the status of modern media to include the low quality of the journalism. I see many, many errors like the allusion/illusion poll/pole errors of this story on The Blaze. For some of the errors, I have e-mailed the writer that made the mistake. Most of the errors I just do not bother. The Blaze really needs to have someone proofread what is posted. This article could not have possibly been proofread as those errors sure would have been caught by any competent proofreader. I have offered to do proofreading for The Blaze on a pay-per-piece basis. Regardless of how The Blaze resolves the problem, it must be resolved. The writing with its constant errors just goes to prove the standard that all media is just as poor quality as another. At the very least, have a policy where one of the other writers must proofread an article before it gets posted.
Report Post »Larry Sheldon
Posted on September 9, 2011 at 9:46pmI also suffer from the delusion that anybody actually reads these comments.
I have suffered thus since day one.
Report Post »asybot12
Posted on September 11, 2011 at 12:46amSo I guess you just like reading your own comments.
Report Post »asybot12
Posted on September 11, 2011 at 12:52amyou must be one sorry deeply in pain person, or is it that you just like hurting yourself? Have you have been been doing this all along.(BTW it is advertisement not advertziment speaking of spelling).
Report Post »Larry Sheldon
Posted on September 9, 2011 at 9:44pmI thought this site would be the last refuge of things like coherent sentences, correct spellings and all.
Sad.
Not a good advertizement for home-schooling, Unless not one of you was home-schooled,
Report Post »kledwards
Posted on September 9, 2011 at 8:12pm…and PLEASE…and ALLusion is quite different from an ILLusion…it leaves me trying to imagine what an ‘optical allusion’ would look like…
Report Post »kledwards
Posted on September 9, 2011 at 8:32pm…sorry, the image eludes me…
Report Post »David Foxfire
Posted on September 9, 2011 at 6:12pmSomeone needs to learn global search and replace: poll should be pole.
Report Post »The Monster
Posted on September 10, 2011 at 6:54pmIt never ceases to amaze me how professional writers and editors can make such errors. There are no voters on the Moon, so it doesn’t have polls.
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