Tonight

**BuFfY** · 3rd May 2007, 21:54

Right... your mission tonight... Go look at the moon!! It is so bright there are hardly any other stars in the sky!
Just went for a ride to Browns Bay and back and it was purely amazing!

Enjoy

**Colapop** · 3rd May 2007, 21:56

I see clouds...

**riffer** · 3rd May 2007, 21:58

Yup. Definitely clouds.

**Steam** · 3rd May 2007, 21:58

OH MY GOD that means there has been a solar flare on the sun, and the sunshine is blastingly bright, and all the people and plants on the other side of the world have been roasted to death already, there must be huge firestorms covering the whole sunny hemisphere! (crap, America is still in darkness, they're ok.)
Run to the supermarket! Stockpile food! Head for high ground!

**Grahameeboy** · 3rd May 2007, 22:02

Dont worry Steam........there is always the Dairy in the morning.

Yep, looking towards Mt Vic....the moon is real bright and just a few stars....wow

**Hitcher** · 3rd May 2007, 22:23

Ah woooo!

Might explain some of the goings on around these parts today. Particularly those werebikers!

**BuFfY** · 3rd May 2007, 22:27

Your imitation of a werebiker??.... excellent! lol

Yeah we heard a few dogs howling. Amazing what a (almost) full moon can do!

**Curious_AJ** · 3rd May 2007, 22:47

awesome.. i cant see the moon

the moon is my friend more than the sun is... i like night.. its not too hot usually... but i love cloudy days.. i dont like sunny days for some reason.. well depending on whether i want to go to the beach or not.. if the beanc has waves, cloudy for the win, if not, then it must be SUNNY!!

aah.. karekare, best waves ive ever swam in, in NZ.. and it was cloudy.. it was awesome!!

**peasea** · 3rd May 2007, 23:05

Originally Posted by BuFfY

Right... your mission tonight... Go look at the moon!! It is so bright there are hardly any other stars in the sky!
Just went for a ride to Browns Bay and back and it was purely amazing!

Enjoy

Check this moon, honey!

**Deviant Esq** · 4th May 2007, 00:24

Originally Posted by Curious_AJ

The moon is my friend more than the sun is... I like night..

Me too. I studied astronomy at university for a time... what I learnt changed my perspective on the moon, the solar system, the Milky Way (the spiral galaxy our solar system is a part of), nearby galaxies like M31 Andromeda... the whole way I look at the night sky really. It's something that just fascinated me. One of the first things I learnt when studying it was the sheer scale. I mean, the Sun is far more massive than the Earth, and far bigger than any of the planets. Yet it's a relatively small star. The nearest star to our own Sun, Alpha Centauri, is 4.2 light years away, close to the solar system in the Milky Way.

Scale that down... If the Sun were the size of a pea, by that scale, if the Sun were in central Christchurch, where would you think Alpha Cen to be? Next block? Remember at the size of a pea, even if it was a block away suspended in the air you couldn't see it. Hornby? Not even close - it'd be in Blenhiem. There is that much empty space, that much distance between astronomical objects, it just blows your mind when you grasp the sheer scale. I'd love to pick up studying it again. Hope these pics are interesting for some...

Some of the images I've saved over a few years viewing this website: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html

1. M31 Andromeda spiral galaxy - in the local group of galaxies. Recognise my avatar now?

2. A Solar prominance, and the relative size of the Earth
3. NGC 5139: Omega Centauri. A large globular cluster (about 10 million stars) in the Centaurus constellation, Milky Way. Explanation here.
4. Coma cluster of galaxies. Nearly every blob in this image is a galaxy. Each of these galaxies houses billions of stars - as our own Milky Way does.
5. NGC 2539: Thor's Helmet. An emission nebula 30 light years across, about 15,000 light years away.
6. M74 Spiral Galaxy - A brilliant image of a spiral galaxy conveniently face on to us. Astonomers think this could be the way the Milky Way might look if we could view it from outside. The whole Solar System would be smaller than a pinprick on this image.

**Riff Raff** · 4th May 2007, 00:52

I don't like full moons when I'm on night shift...

**scumdog** · 4th May 2007, 01:00

Originally Posted by Riff Raff

I don't like full moons when I'm on night shift...

Cops hate 'em too.

I have this theory that the gravitational pull of the moon causes a kind of 'spring tide' effect in human bodies - and all that extra fluid in the cranium waters down the thought process, more so in shit-heads....