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Subject:
Time difference between succesive moonrises
Category: Science > Astronomy Asked by: joergs-ga List Price: $10.00 |
Posted:
05 Aug 2004 03:07 PDT
Expires: 04 Sep 2004 03:07 PDT Question ID: 383773 |
I would like to understand what causes the time difference between moonrises on succesive days that can be as short as 25 minutes in fall and as long as 90 minutes in spring. If it is due to only the inclination of the earth´s axis, please describe why the sunrises do not suffer from that same effect. Thank you ! |
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There is no answer at this time. |
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Subject:
Re: Time difference between succesive moonrises
From: touf-ga on 05 Aug 2004 16:37 PDT |
The time of moonrise is affected by four things: 1) earth-sun position (earth's orbit) 2) earth's tilt 3) earth's rotation 4) moon-earth position (moon's orbit) which means you have, effectively, four asynchronous cycles. The sunrise is obviously not affected by the fourth. That is why you see large changes in the moonrise but only small changes in the sunrise. |
Subject:
Re: Time difference between succesive moonrises
From: omeganumber-ga on 06 Aug 2004 15:16 PDT |
Sunrises do suffer from a similar effect. |
Subject:
Re: Time difference between succesive moonrises
From: racecar-ga on 06 Aug 2004 15:56 PDT |
If the moon's orbit lay on the celestial equator (that is, if the moon was always right over the equator) the effect you describe would not exist. However, the moon does not orbit over the equator. The orbit comes closer to lying on the ecliptic, but it's several degrees off that as well. And the plane of the orbit precesses due to the gravitational torque from the sun with a period of around 19 years. Anyway, the point is that as the moon orbits, it generally moves in a north/south direction. On the average, each moonrise is about 50 minutes later than the previous one. But if the moon is in the part of its orbit where it's moving north, and you are observing it from the northern hemisphere, you will see it rise earlier than it would have without the meridional motion. That is, it will rise less than 50 min later than it did on the previous day. Conversely, if the moon is moving south, it will rise more than 50 min later. The exact opposite is true in the southern hemisphere. If you're near the equator, the moon always rises about 50 min later each day. There are still variations due to things like the eccentricity of the moon's orbit (it orbits in an ellipse, not a circle, and its angular speed is greater when it's closer to the earth), but they are smaller in magnitude. As omega pointed out, there are variations in sunrise due to a similar effect--the sun moves north/south relative to the earth. But the sun moves much more slowly relative to the earth--it takes a year to go through its north/south cycle, whereas it takes the moon less than a month. So the day-to-day variations in moonrise time are larger than those in sunrise time, and the size of the variations change more quickly. |
Subject:
Re: Time difference between succesive moonrises
From: richard-ga on 07 Aug 2004 11:24 PDT |
Juliet.: O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable. http://pd.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/romeojuliet/section9.html |
Subject:
Re: Time difference between succesive moonrises
From: omnivorous-ga on 07 Aug 2004 12:20 PDT |
Joergs -- You may find this question, dealing with the angle of a sunset, to be interesting in helping to understand the path that the moon takes relative to the horizon: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=299644 Best regards, Omnivorous-GA |
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