• Ech@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Hah, they actually made it look like an edited comic. That’s funny.

    • Pirky@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      It used to look bigger a long time ago. It’s actually moving away from us every so slightly each year. Eventually there will be no more total lunar eclipses because the moon will simply be too far away.

      • unalivejoy@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        It’s probably Jupiter. It’s always stealing moons. Why do you think it has so many?

      • itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        11 months ago

        That’s actually because it’s slowing earths rotation down! So as the moon moves away, days get longer down here. If the earth and moon were tidally locked, it would stop gaining distance

      • theneverfox@pawb.social
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        11 months ago

        Which makes it crazier - the earth was around for a long time before humans came around. Then the sun and the moon become the same size in the sky, and boom! Humanity

  • indepndnt@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    The most harrowing fact that I know is that during the Apollo 11 mission, as they began to enter the moon’s orbit and headed behind it, they were no longer able to communicate with earth. This is indicated on the flight plan* by the note “Broken trajectory lines indicate loss of earth communications.” So here’s the crew, impossibly far from everything any human has ever known, for about an hour unable to hear (or most of that time even see) any sign of the only experience humanity has ever known. It’s just them sandwiched between an unfamiliar moon and the blackness of space.

    • Chetzemoka@startrek.website
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      11 months ago

      All of the Apollo missions, actually, including 13. In fact, Apollo 13 marks the farthest distance human beings have ever been from Earth because of the modified trajectory they had to use in order to get back to Earth faster with their damaged spacecraft.

      But Apollo 13 also is the only moon mission where there was never a single individual alone in the ship when it went dark behind the moon. (On all other missions, the Command Module Pilot remained in the ship while the other two landed on the surface, so for the duration of that time, they were doing solo orbits that took them through the silent shadow of the moon.