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As pointed out by usmc0311, the moon moves in it's orbit, by a small amount. But that small amount is more than enough to make the moon seem to move a large difference to your eye.
The vertical can be estimated to about 2°
Cognitive illusions are assumed to arise by interaction with assumptions about the world, leading to "unconscious inferences"
Our brain makes sense of shapes and symbols putting them together like a jigsaw puzzle, formulating that which isn't there to that which is believable.
The illusions arise when the "judgments" implied in the unconscious analysis of the scene are in conflict with reasoned considerations about it.
Originally posted by luxordelphi
The past two nights I've been looking at the sky.
I'm kind of addicted to observatories, architecturally, so take every opportunity to visit. There has been quite an evolution in the security presence and the addition of personnel walking the floor 'to answer questions' is all very interesting but truly the subject of another thread.
Originally posted by cloaked4u
Originally posted by eriktheawful
I'm at the 36 parallel, and I can tell you that I've seen the moon almost directly overhead many, many, many times.
I even watched a lunar eclipse here in 1993 and it was directly over head.
I've been a amateur astronomer with my own telescopes for several decades now. I own several telescopes both old and new. The old ones require a polar alignment in order to "dial in" both Right Ascension and Declination to center on faint, deep space objects. The new scopes I have use a computerized "Go To" feature, however, even with the "Go To" feature, you still have to point at two different objects in the sky and tell the system what they are (I normally uses Polaris as one of these objects), and then the system can align itself.
The point I'm making is this: if our world were to be "off" on it's axis, then when I do these alignments, and then dial in the coordinates of a faint object, like say the Ringed Nebula, when I look in my telescope, it wouldn't be there. I would have to adjust the RA and Dec, and I, to this day do not have to do this. Everything is still in the correct place.
Better yet, another reason I do the polar alignments is so that I can track these objects to do astrophotography with my telescopes. If they did not align correctly, NONE of my shots would turn out, and would be smeared or streaked.
So I'm not sure what you think your eyes are telling you, however I can tell you that mine are showing the night sky, just as it has been for several decades now.
And yes, the moon can be almost over head where we are. I have spent many a night with my telescope pointed almost over head, but while the telescope LOOKS like it is, it's never directly at 90 for that.
In other words: craning your neck and looking up is not exactly a good way to measure something. No mater how well you might hit a baseball.edit on 31-3-2012 by eriktheawful because: spelling
oh really. Tell me then because i must be confused. When i was young the stars/planets out there, looked white. So tell me what is that big bright orange light in the sky and it is the only orange one out there,but don't believe me go look for yourself. In MN at about12 to 1 am , i look up in the sky and there it is, the only orange light in the sky.