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Low-Hanging Moon Explained

Posted by Zonk on from the watch-your-head dept.

gollum123 wrote to mention a BBC article which explains the low-hanging moon of the past few nights. From the article:"For the past few nights the moon has appeared larger than many people have seen it for almost 20 years. It is the world's largest optical illusion, and one of its most enduring mysteries. The mystery of the Moon Illusion, witnessed by millions of people this week, has puzzled great thinkers for centuries. There is still no agreed on explaination for why the moon appears bigger when it's on the horizon than when it's high in the night sky."

6 of 381 comments (clear)

  1. Bruce Almighty flashback by JWSmythe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is news?

    I was thinking the same thing a few nights ago, watching the moon rise
    over LA. Then I considered, "Near the ground, I consider it in proportion to the objects around it. In the sky, I have no reference"

    Great thinkers? Centuries? Bah.

    Now what they need to figure out is how to fix the pollution in LA. The
    moon is red until it gets above the smog. Well, that is if you're not
    *IN* the smog.

    --
    Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
    1. Re:Bruce Almighty flashback by zCyl · · Score: 2, Insightful

      For example, we think mirrors flip you around left to right. Well...it's just as correct to think they've flipped you around up to down. If you flipped an image in the mirror up to down, the person would be correct, although standing on their head.

      Uh, no it's not. That would be silly. Look in a mirror, raise your hand, and try to conceive of the image of your hand going down. The reason mirrors flip left and right is because left and right are defined relative to which direction is forward, and mirrors flip which direction is forward. Up and down are defined more absolutely in terms of which direction the Earth is.

  2. Perception of distance and perspective by Sv-Manowar · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's amazing how much of how our brains and sight work together to recognize object's size and position creates these kinds of illusions. It just shows that even a finely tuned system that works well in everyday use can be caught out, and how because we rely on our vision to give us the absolute truth, its shocking when something manages to fool that sense.

    --
    Business Voyeur
  3. Explained? RTFA? by StaticLimit · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So the title of the submission is: Low-Hanging Moon Explained... and the text of the submission itself says "There is still no agreed on explaination for why the moon appears bigger".

    Who writes these titles? Do they even read the submission, let alone the article... (extra scorn if the submitter wrote the title)

    Wacky. And I read the article too (before it got posted here). There's definitely no explanation... a couple theories, sure, but they debunk the theories right in the article.

    - StaticLimit

  4. "Low-hanging" moon? by Kelson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not since June 1987 has the moon been this low in the sky

    Umm... how about twice a day, when it rises and sets?

    Who writes this crap?

  5. Re:Didn't you just by Fittysix · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But I think he means that in a different way, your brain knows the horizon is far away, but has no idea how far up the moon actually is because you've never been up there.
    It's about a distance frame of reference, not a size frame of reference.

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    *.sig