Where Be The Man In The Moon
Day 253 – March 31, 2012
Taking a break from looking side-to-side can have its advantages and disadvantages.
Sometimes, when I point my head skyward, I am able to see new and beautiful things (see here and here).
Other times, I can become disoriented as evidenced by my story here.
Today was one of those latter, disorienting days.
I was outside enjoying the mid-afternoon Saturday air as the temperature began to cool as the sun made its way below the western horizon. I looked up and, as I expected, saw the waxing gibbous moon. Sure enough, just a shade over half of the lunar face was lit up reflecting the rays of the Sun.
However, the more I stared at our closest natural satellite, an odd sense of wrongness overcame me. Something, and I was hard pressed to put my foot on it, was wrong with what I was seeing.
The picture below is what I saw. See if you can figure out what is different about this picture of the Moon a day after its first quarter phase. I will let you know that this image has been doctored or altered in any way. It is true WYSIWYG.
Good Old Luna
I couldn’t figure out why the Moon looked wrong to me, so I went inside and accessed the Internet to assist me. Here is what I found when I did a search for the current phase of the Moon.
That's the look of our neighboring satellite I'm used to
I then realized what was wrong and here are four words I never thought I would ever utter, read, or write (outside of a science-fiction novel).
The Moon is upside-down.
For the first time in my life, I was looking at the Moon in the northern part of the sky. When I lived in the United States, I always lived above the Tropic of Cancer and so the Moon (and Sun) was always to the south of me.
Now, the Moon was north of me and was upside-down.
In addition to the new experiences of visiting Machu Picchu, exploring the Peruvian Amazon, and driving in the insane highways of Lima, I can now add seeing an upside-down Moon to my list of firsts.
I wonder if people from Peru think Luna is upside-down when they travel to Canada.
Posted on April 18, 2012, in Difference, Newspaper, Peru and tagged astronomy, Lima, Moon, Peru, travel. Bookmark the permalink. 4 Comments.
I love this! I can definitely see myself having a fit of ADHD trying to adjust to that!
I now get around the feeling of oddness when I stare at the Moon by telling myself that I’m looking at it through my telescope. The telescope that I had when we lived in Virginia reversed the image (something to do with optics and the mirrors). It’s goofy, but a good trick nonetheless.
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