It had a been a few days since I checked for the Moon. Part of the reason is that since we retire to bed so early in the evening, I would typically not be able to see the Moon setting in the West during this phase. It would be too high in the sky to be seen from our kitchen window at sunset. Still I thought I'd see it if I craned my neck, or failing that, I could see it on the other side where our patio lets me do a similar observation of the eastern sky. No Moon at all. Where was it?
The air temperature on the patio was uncannily perfect. I asked Jessica, who told me by looking it up online that the local temperature was 71. It was felt delicious on the skin. So I went outside, going down the steps into the parking lot, and then looking up I saw the Moon, blurred out into multiple images as I wasn't wearing my contact lenses.
It surprises me how slowly the New Moon grows from being the slender bow in the twilight to being a thicker crescent. I did a quick surveying of its position and estimated it was, just at the moment after the solar disk disappeared below the horizon, about 70-75 degrees up from the horizon towards the meridian. That seemed about right, where it should be a few days after being new.
No stars were yet visible so I decided to guess what constellation would be behind the Moon. The Sun this time of year is probably in Capricorn. This is not the astrological Sun sign of people born today, which would be Aquarius, but as many know, due to the precession of the equinoxes the constellations have shifted backwards from the astrological "signs" by about one sign since Antiquity.
If the Sun is "in" the constellation Capricorn right now, then seventy-five degrees would put the waxing crescent Moon three signs further along in the zodiac at Aries.
I didn't stay out long enough in the dark to check. But I did linger for ten minutes in the perfect air, leaning against a brick wall and contemplating the hues of the sunset and how they progressed from blood orange upward to tangerine, peach, and then white, pale blue, and into deep blue, which is how the sky looked round the Moon. I noticed how deeper the blue seemed when I looked up from the light blue boundary suddenly upward to the Moon. Fleetingly I saw deep royal velvet sky that pleased me with appreciation of its beauty. So of course I did this multiple times to re-create the optical effect, each time drinking the super-vivid blue-purple in the fleeting instance before it faded to a more normal deep blue.
After a few moments of this, I slipped into a reverie, my mind wandered into thoughts far away, of tomorrow's plans, and of people I know far away, and I laughed at myself as I caught myself wondering if my thoughts were bouncing off the Moon like a satellite and reaching them somehow. Absurd of course, but stranger things happen in the universe, things I have experienced directly, and there is part of me that can't help but believe what I said is true, even if it sounds beyond ridiculous in a rational sense. Is not God capable of arranging Creation to be so?
This is perhaps the essence of the beauty of the Moon, that defies both reason and unreason. All my scientific reckonings of the degrees relative to the meridian and positions on the zodiac are real and true. The Moon is a clock, a mechanism following the laws of dynamics slavishly. The motion seems simple to reckon at first (for example tomorrow the moon will be about thirty degrees further back to the east, but this coarse-grained prediction of motion is only the start. Subtle effects arise when one tries calculate the minute details and variations (which I have done in the past), as one tries to pin down the exact position. But this is only one part of the Moon, and maybe not the most important. Pity the poor mind that only sees the mechanism of the clock and does feel the pulse of the beating heart.
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