People Have Them

The other night we were driving back from a family party and had the privilege of watching the late rise of a waning gibbous Moon. It was gorgeous, luminous and looked mysterious and awe-inspiring hovering over the spans of the Tappan Zee bridge in New York State. As is my usual practice, I stared at it for awhile, just taking in the “Moon”-ness of it all; the three-dimensionality of the world next door to Earth. It’s a wonderful thing to watch the Moon and think about all the people who have studied it, the handful of men who have visited it, and the many who will visit it in the future.

We see beautiful moonrises and full moons and appreciate moonlight because the Moon is bathed in sunlight, same as Earth is. The sunlight is made up of photons, packets of energy that are given off by the Sun as a result of nuclear reactions deep inside. It’s a process that has been going on since the Sun and planets formed more than 4.5 billion years ago. Granted, the reflected light isn’t as intense as the light straight from the Sun. But, even though a full moon is 500,000 times fainter than the Sun, moonlight is still reflected sunlight.

I was amused to read today that some guy in Arizona is channeling moonlight and reflecting it onto people, who then claim to have been healed of asthma and cancer, and had their depression lifted. He claims that the different colors in the light will activate parts of the body and help them heal. There’s no scientific evidence for this claim, but I do suspect that there’s a psychological connection that this guy is deliberately claiming as a real, physical effect. I’d like to see some scientific proof.

Because us human folk have active imaginations, we often see things in the Moon that really aren’t there, such as the patterns of light and dark on the surface that we often call “the Man in the Moon” or “the rabbit in the Moon.” There are lots of old folk tales about how moonlight affects people, usually as a calming influence or, paradoxically, as a cause of mental illness or derangement.

It’s much more likely that the folks who are “bathing in moonlight” are confusing the feelings of awe and inspiration and other emotional reactions that the Moon elicits with actual physical reactions. Entirely understandable. But, it’s not medicine and it’s not science. It’s metaphysical. And, it’s not the Moon’s fault that humans have a psychological capacity for things mysterious and magical. The Moon will sit there and cheerfully reflect sunlight from now until the end of the solar system and it’ll still be sunlight (reflected). It only becomes magical, metaphysical, or mysterious when humans (and their imaginations and emotions) get into the act.

What’s loony about this idea of moonlight curing diseases? The fact that people are paying money to stand in the way of some moonlight when most of us can do it for free on any moonlit night.

So, here’s a challenge for you: look at StarDate’s Calendar of the Moon’s phases and figure out a time when you can go stand in some moonlight. Then, go out and do it! Take along a pair of binoculars (or a telescope, if you have one) and check out the lunar craters. You’ll enjoy the moonlight and get to do a little lunar exploration, all in one go. And, the feeling of accomplishment you’ll have will be all your own, not caused by the supposed “mysterious” qualities of reflected sunlight.

Stars emit light (electromagnetic radiation) and heat. If you take the light from a star and send it through an instrument called a spectrograph, you can essentially break up the light into its component colors (wavelengths). You’ve seen one form of a spectrum in nature: it’s called a rainbow and it was created by light being broken up through a prism of raindrops.

The image above is a graph spectrum showing us the chemical elements that exist in a star called NGC1333-IRAS 4B. The infrared light was analyzed by an instrument aboard the Spitzer Space Telescope (which is sensitive to infrared wavelengths). The scientists compared it to a model of a water spectrum, and found water vapor in the region surrounding the star. What they think is happening is that ice particles in the surrounding environment are falling toward the star. When they hit the disk of gas and dust around the star, they heat up and melt, forming water vapor.

These details are in the spectrum, which tells us about the motion of the ice particles surrounding the star.

Spectra are a part of astrophysical research that can look pretty boring or confusing to people who don’t see them every day. Yet, if you know how to read them and what to look for, they can reveal details of an astronomical object that you just can’t see with the naked eye or in an image. Here’s another one, from a recent Gemini Observatory press release, that shows the evidence for water and ammonia ices on Pluto’s companion world, Charon. It is centered on infrared light radiating at 2.2 microns. The solid line is a model of a surface with ices called ammonia hydrates, along with water ices. Other dots are the data from the surface of Charon that represent ammonia hydrate ices. (You can read more about this one here.)

Now I don’t normally “do” spectra in my planetarium shows, mostly because they require more explanation than we often have time for. But, spectra ARE treasure troves of information, hidden right before our eyes.