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Our Tremulous Moon

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Here’s some evidence that things are not so sedate on the surface of our moon.
Photos from the latest gizmo to get a close look at our natural satellite reveal signs of geologic activity sometime within the last 50 million years. In other words, just yesterday. This and yesterday’s Super Tuesday results pretty much put a fork in former Speaker Gingrich’s chances to be our next President. Who wants to spend precious tax dollars building and traveling to Moon Base Newt when all the fun of leaping around in low-G could be ruined by a rolling Moonquake? Next thing you know we’ll discover the destructive tracks of an airless tornado. All the disadvantages of Earth and still nothing green? No thanks, Newt.

Photo from ASU/SI/NASA

But whether or not we ever go there to use it as a leaping off place, the moon will remain a beguiling bauble in our night sky – a maker of songs and silent witness to a trillion wishes. Who knew, during those times when we stood shivering in the moonlight, the moon itself might have been shaking too? Seismic activity is more charming at a safe distance. Now that we know it happens, perhaps exceptionally patient lovers will be able to see the lunar surface tremble.

Blue Moon, you saw me standing alone.
Without a dream in my heart.
Without a love of my own.

Blue Moon, how did you sense what I ache for?
A love I silently spake for.
Is that what you had a quake for?

And then suddenly there appeared above me
a crash of rocks and dust – a lunar din
I heard somebody whisper ‘Can you love me?”
and when I looked the moon had cracked a grin.

Blue Moon, now I’m no longer alone
without a dream in my heart
without a love of my own.

And it so COULD be our way station to Mars! Why, just tonight, in the eastern sky, the Blue Moon will be quite close to the mysterious Red Planet. Almost exactly the distance from one side to the other of your clenched fist when held at arms length.
Why couldn’t we just step across?

Sky Map from NASA

What to you like to look at in the night sky?

65 thoughts on “Our Tremulous Moon”

  2. Good morning to all. I guess Newt’s wishes didn’t come true. The man in the moon didn’t smile on him. Thank you, man in the moon.

    I usually only do night sky watching when I hear about some unusual event, like a lunar eclipse. I have seen the northern lights at night when in Canada and even once here in Southern Minnesota. It is always fun to see shooting stars which I have seen a few times. Once I was sitting with another person looking at the sky at night at a camp grounds and we had go and hide in our tent. This person was sure that there was something strange in the sky that might be a threat to us.

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  3. i live looking at the night sky and all my knowledge comes form a couple of trips up to grand rapids with a group of guys years ago with a library book to look up what we were looking at while we were looking up. it is very cool to know the constellations and watch them as they go by. i saw orion last night on my way home from wisconsin on a late night drive. one of the last for the year. i wait for him to come back in the fall from austrailia where he goes for the summer. caseopia and sephus the seven sisters and signus the swan. it is a treat to be able to recognize some of it. i would love to know all about it. i should start the mission. thanks for the prod dale. if the night is clear and my eyes are open at eleven i will check out out virgo and mars.

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      5. This is amazingly beautiful, Linda! And yes, it makes me feel veeeeery tiny in the whole scheme of things. The soup you sent home with me last weekend was so good 🙂 and I’m thinking, It’s only taken us 4.5 billion years since the birth of our solar system to evolve to where we sit on our little plots of ground in Minnesota, growing beans and tomatoes and making soup to eat on a Saturday night and pondering the nature of things. Like how do goats and kohlrabi and tsunami and baboons and Earl Grey tea in my favorite teacup figure in the grand scheme? And how our grandchildren are two steps further evolved than we are. And how the grand scheme, the big mystery, will never be mine to know except in tiny glimpses like this. I’m thinking, thank goodness for a good cup of tea, a bowl of soup, a good book, and my granddaughters. It may not be much in the grand scheme of things, but it’s mine and I love it. Oh, and thank goodness for Baboons!!!

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  4. Rise and Glimmer Baboons!

    We are back from looking at the Deep South’s night sky, which drenched us last Saturday night. My favorite night sky events are Northern Lights, falling stars, and the Hale-Bopp comet over the SW desert in 1995 or 96 (can’t remember for sure). But always, always the very clear night sky over Iowa or N. MN is a thrill.

    I am not a sophisticated astronomer, so I look for Big Dipper, Little Dipper and Orion’s Belt. Venus is often visible, too. And as Clyde mentioned, that big yellowish, whitish thing up there.

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    3. Those are my big three, too (Big D, Little D and Orion’s “W”), plus Venus and the ever changing moon. In Japan they see a rabbit in the moon. I can see it; can you?

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  5. We have great star watching out here. I knew an anesthesiologist from Williston who used to star watch by lying down in his yard in the middle of the night, even in winter. He had an alarm in his pocket that was set to go off after a certain length of time so he wouldn’t die of hypothermia. Like Jacque,I like the shooting stars and the Northern Lights and Orion. Daughter recalls a wonderful Northern lights display a couple of years ago when she was visiting a friend at a lake home in the Canadian Shield. She said they sat on the dock and watched the lights dance over the lake.

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  6. We had gone into the Boundary Waters on dog sleds, using dog power to strike deep in canoe country where fishermen rarely go now since motorized transportation was stopped. After two days of living on the ice, fishing for lake trout, sleeping in an igloo we built, we came out of the wilderness at night. It was one of those times when the starry sky was shockingly bright and seemed to be close enough we could touch the larger stars just by reaching up a little. The Milky Way was almost garishly bright. When the sky is pitch black like that and the air is perfectly clear, the stars seem to throb as they give off their light, and you will be amazed to see that there are tiny stars and middle-sized stars and huge honking magnum stars all mixed together and strewn across the sky like a myriad of wildflowers growing in some secret mountain valley. It was silent except for the hushy slide of runners on snow and the happy panting of the dogs, each dog puffing out a steam cloud with every exhalation. So rich and bright were the stars that we turned off our headlamps and let the stars light our way, their cold blue light reflected off the snow as the dogs carried us home on happy, busy paws.

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  7. I see the moon, the moon sees me
    0ver the mountain over the sea
    Please let the light that shines on me
    shine on the one I love.

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  8. Morning–

    Orion is my favorite; I always talk to him when he’s around. Like Tim said, he’s headed out for the summer.
    In my teenage angst-filled years, I spent a lot of time sitting on the hood of my car looking at the stars.

    Several years ago we had our farm yard light taken down so we could see the stars better. (And it’s sort of ironic; the ‘yard light’ used to be a symbol of prosperity wasn’t it Clyde? If you had a yard light it meant electricity had arrived at your farm!)
    Clyde, tell me about your farms yard light? Jim? Others have yard light stories?

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    1. Before farms got larger, you could see more farm yard lights as you drove through the country at night. During the farm crisis, when a lot of the small farms were lost, I remember people saying “tell the last farmer who leaves the country side to turn out the lights”.

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    2. My Dad grew up in rural areas that didn’t have electricity. He said his father told him he should become an electrical engineer to bring electric power to the country. He did become and electric engineer and worked on keeping rural power plants operating during the Second World War.

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    3. I have no real story. Did not really mention it in my novel. Our farm was very isolated and we got electricity late, about 1954, when I was ten. Did not get indoor plumbing until I was 12. The yard light was a wonderful boon for us kids. We played under it, kick the can mostly. On nice evenings my parents would sit on the back stoop and relax watching us. The back yard was a farm back yard, in the middle of all the buildings, but it had a pretty good slope to it. Warm soft evenings. We did not see the moon rise. We had the Sawtooth “Mountains”, as they are called on maps, between us and the east, the Lake. I do not have a lot of warm fuzzy sort of memories, lots of happy ones, but few that are pure emotional triggers. The yard light was one. The light on the snow, walking under it in early mornings and evenings to fetch wood and do the barn chores. In Two Harbors the sunrises after 8 and sets around 4:30 in December. Maybe because I remember carrying a Coleman lantern to the barn, the light carries that feeling, but it does evoke a sense of peace.
      I love Dale’s space stuff like his excellent one today. I have many books on space which I share with my son. We love the pictures sent back. But the night sky is to me a bunch of lights and a yellow/white thing. Our night skies back then had so many stars to see. I did not know how things like yard lights would blur their power.
      In sixth grade, when I was a rather difficult student, I objected to memorizing the constellations as pointless and nothing to do with science. Mrs. Frost got frosted with me. But I did not do it. flunked that test and am still proud of that.

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  9. It wasn’t on a farm, but it’s a yard light. story, sort of. When I was about nine my parents had friends, Max and Marie, who used to visit us regularly. I was a shy child and didn’t interact with adults much, but Max and Marie had made an effort to draw me out, and I looked forward to their visits. We had a yard light in the back yard, which bordered on some fields that were bisected by the road to Pleasanton (California), which was the road Max and Marie traveled to get to our place. When we were expecting them, I would stand at the sliding glass doors at the rear of the house and watch for headlights on the road, and each time I saw them, I would turn the light off and on three times. If it was Max and Marie’s car, the headlights would wink off and on three times. Don’t remember what started that, just one of those things.

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  10. When I left last night to run errands, Venus and Jupiter were so bright and lovely I went back in the house to call Husband and Daughter out to look – Orion was out where we could wave hello, the moon was framed in the limbs of a tree in our back yard, the dippers were faint, but visible. It was lovely. It’s rare, living in the middle of the city, that we see so much so clearly. I love to go to my brother’s house south of Prior Lake where there isn’t all of the ambient light to look at the stars, so it was quite a treat to see so much last night. It was about 7pm, so the sky still had that dark blue glow that happens right before full dark, which seemed to make the planets and moon pop out in their loveliness that much more.

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  11. I love it out here when the moon is so bright that it casts shadows. If I am out on the road on a night like that, I am sometimes tempted to turn off the car lights and drive by moonlight, but I suppose that wouldn’t be a good idea on I-94, even if there is no other traffic.

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    1. We used to sometimes work late in the woods and come back up to the house on the horse-drawn sled with moonlight falling around us, showing us the trail through the woods to the field and the climb up to the buildings. The yard light and barn lights would be on above us to guide and welcome us. My father I think must have timed this to the moon. The cold snap of the air, frosted woolen mittens, thick layers of clothes, the smell and puff of the working horse. We had to stop several times going up the hill to let the horse “blow” as we called it. My father would roll and light a cigaret on the first stop. I can smell that mixed with the horse odor. I would lie on the top of the load with the dog beside me. I would stare up at all those stars, not thinking, just lying there tired. Then into the warm and friendly-smelling barn with its electric lights with 2-inch-thick frost on the windows from the animals. I would unharness the horse and feed it grain, watch it get every bit of grain out of the corners of its feed box despite its thick tongue and wide lips. I can feel the very softness of those lips, so unexpected at the end of the long bony head.

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      2. A vivid picture of the time, the smells, the cold, the sounds, the creatures. Lovely.
        There is nothing softer than a horse’s muzzle and lips. Love that wuzzling and feeling around for any scrap of something tasty.

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      4. Wonderful, Clyde. I can just see and smell it all. Thanks! I hope you are writing these memories down for your kids and grandkids.

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    2. I’ve been known to shut my headlights off in the middle of the road to watch the fireflies dance in the soy bean crop down the road… but I stop my car first & keep an eye out for other vehicles. I suppose, if you were to pull over on I-94 and lay on your car hood, you might draw some attention and have the swat team out checking on you in short order, Renee.

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      1. I think it would be more likely that the Highway Patrol would insist I take a breathylser and demonstrate my motor coordination.

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      2. Most likely, you’re right, Renee… although you never know. I DO recall San Diego swat team engaged in a 2-hour stand off with an empty car & the car took a pretty good beating in the process. 😉

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  13. I have to say, this topic reminds me of the Bill Nye moon volcanoes segment on Fox News, when he had to explain to the interviewer that volcanoes aren’t related to global warming (Bill’s expression is priceless, as is his adjustment down to a 2nd-grade vocabulary):
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GowSyF0G-o

    I felt myself fortunate to see the Northern Lights one night as I was driving from Madison to the Twin Cities. I think my childhood love for the Moon was the first step on the path that led me to Paganism, and of course I try (emphasis on try) to observe the full and new moons each month. I was also fascinated by the connection between mythology and constellations and I’ve always wished I could have learned something about astronomy in school. I can still spot Orion, Cassiopeia and the Pleiades, but I really need to brush up on my stars.

    We’ve gotten this far in the thread without anyone mentioning Beetlejuice? I am hanging out with a different crowd here!

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    2. Thanks for the link – you’re right, his expression is priceless. It’s alarming that he needs to reiterate that “the science is real.” Clearly Mr. Nye’s skills in explaining science to youngsters pays off when explaining things to the dimwitted.

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    3. There’s a video tape passed around educational circles showing a man at Harvard graduation asking students and professors why we have seasons. It is so funny to listen to them all say the wrong thing if not stupid things with great authority. He had a hard time finding anyone who would 1) say “I don’t know” or 2) give the right explanation. What that proves is up to you to decide. Personally I do not think it proves much of anything.

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  14. I’ve learned several constellations from Husband, and my favorite is the Teapot, which shows up low on the horizon in late summer, if memory serves.I look forward to when we can be out in the country or anywhere that more of the night sky is visible.

    Lovely stories today. Barely on topic: A friend Nancy’s daughter had her first baby boy, and they both sent out the birth announcements, hand written in Daughter’s somewhat illegible flourish. A friend wrote to Nancy lamenting “Oh, you poor thing – how could she name him “Onion.” Guess what was his real name…

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  15. Sweet Phoebe, do not scorn me. Do not, Phoebe.
    Say that you love me not, but say not so
    In bitterness. The common executioner,
    Whose heart th’ accustomed sight of death makes hard,
    Falls not the axe upon the humbled neck
    But first begs pardon. Will you sterner be
    Than he that dies and lives by bloody drops?

    Living in the middle of the city, about the only thing I can see in the night sky anymore is the moon. And I love this week, when it’s big and full (although it does make my dreams wonky). Teenager and I love to look at all the stars when we do our camping trips and get away from the city lights.

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  17. My favorite, by far, is when the northern lights are really cranked up. I’ve experienced ones that were beyond description. I’ll also never forget my first time seeing the southern cross while visiting a friend in the Virgin Islands. I’ve always been aware of the comings & goings of the night sky… it’s familiar & constant like an old friend. To lay on a beach and look up at a sky that I didn’t recognize was, at first, a little unsettling… and then amazing. At home, I spend many a night laying on my car hood up near the cemetery… taking in all that the heavens have to offer up.

    Another solar flare has erupted and it’s effects are headed our way. Some might get a glimpse of the northern lights, if we’re lucky. If not, enjoy the beautiful full moon. Of all the names I’ve heard the March full moon called, I think my favorite is “moon when eyes are sore from bright snow” (although, at least here in southern MN, it does not apply this year).

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    1. Tell us some more names for the monthly moons, please! My calendar says Crust on the Snow Moon (Ojibway) — our snow, what little there is, is very very crusty and crunchy.

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      1. Some of the more obvious that pertain to the season are worm moon, sap moon, and crow moon. Others I’ve heard are fish moon (colonial American), sleepy moon (Chinese), and windy moon (Cherokee)… with a couple more ominous sounding ones, big famine moon (Choctaw) and the death moon (neo Pagan). “Moon when eyes are sore from bright snow” comes from the Dakata Sioux. Who knew the same moon is known by so many different names.

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  18. I’ve been thinking about the song, “Venus Kissed the Moon,” by Christine Lavin. I remember hearing it on the LGMS and I think that particular celestial event won’t happen again for another couple of decades. I remember seeing it when it happened the last time and it was a very lovely thing to see.

    I’ve been fortunate enough to see the northern lights when they were very active and have seen them a number of times here in southern Minnesota. Once I saw some tinges of red in them, but no one believes me.

    I think I’ve also written here about sleeping overnight on the Raft (a neighborhood raft anchored in Cannon Lake when we were kids) and counting shooting stars one night in August until we fell asleep with the rocking, rolling rhythm of the waves. I remember counting up to 17 shooting stars, I think, or was it 21?

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      1. “And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
        they danced by the light of the moon
        the moon, the moon,
        they danced by the light of the moon” 🙂

        The only time I’ve seen the Northern Lights was in 1967 or ’68 when we used to have some serious snows. I was new to Minnesota and was swept away in that amazing celestial light show! I remember green, gold and purpley blue ribbons shimmering high into the sky from the horizon. At the time I didn’t realize that it might be decades, if ever, before I’d see anything like that again.

        Krista, my friends and I also used to sleep out in a tiny sail boat we had when I was young. There’s nothing in the world like rocking to sleep on the water under a canopy of stars, so bright you could reach out and touch them. What wonderful times those were.

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