Here’s a picture of the moon and the sun juxtaposed. They cycle between being the same size in our heavens and being a bit bigger or smaller than each other. It’s spooky. Just the right size to deliver a total eclipse, or an annular one, depending on how they are feeling at the time. A proof of the existence of God if ever there was one. (Now for an explanation of cystic fibrosis).
- To make this picture, the Full Moon on May 6 was photographed with the same camera and telescope used to image the Sun (with a dense solar filter!) on the following day. Of course, on May 6 the Moon was at perigee, the closest point to Earth in its eliptical orbit, making it the largest Full Moon of 2012. Two weeks later, on May 20, the Moon will be near apogee, the most distant point in its orbit, so by then it will be nearly at its smallest apparent size. It will also be a dark New Moon on that date. And for some the New Moon will be surprisingly easy to compare to the Sun, because on May 20 the first solar eclipse of 2012 will be visible from much of Asia, the Pacific, and North America. Along a path 240 to 300 kilometers wide, the eclipse will be annular. Near apogee the smaller silhouetted Moon will fit just inside the bright solar disk.
Here’s a picture of the moon and the sun juxtaposed. They cycle between being the same size in our heavens and being a bit bigger or smaller than each other. It’s spooky. Just the right size to deliver a total eclipse, or an annular one, depending on how they are feeling at the time. A proof of the existence of God if ever there was one. (Now for an explanation of cystic fibrosis).
Games seem frivolous. They can stand as metaphors for life, but typically, the outcome of games doesn’t really matter. I wanted Collingwood to win it’s last game this year, but it didn’t and that’s that. Doesn’t matter. Still as I gradually realised when working on the Government 2.0 work in 2009, the element of play is critically important and not just to high level ‘brainstorming’ activity, but to seizing the opportunities for innovation of all kinds from major disruptive innovation to the most minor improvised improvements in the way things are being done. That’s why I thought things like mashups were so wonderful – they are low cost ways of breaking things up, and inviting others into play with one’s assets (or copies of them while the ‘real’ ones remain on the official website or otherwise in the system somewhere.
Herewith 