Earth, Moon and Sun as seen from above the plane of our solar
system
A
new crop picture at Morgan’s Hill on April 24 was possibly meant
to date the “solar flare” picture at Rutland’s Farm on April 23.
Yet initially it seemed so cryptic that it had everyone puzzled.
Only on the way home from work tonight, when I saw a new
crescent Moon back-illuminated by our Sun, did I finally
understand what it was trying to tell us!
That
new crop picture appeared one day before a new Moon (April 25,
2009), and seems to show Earth, Moon and Sun from a perspective
above (or below) the plane of our solar system:
Three new Moons were shown in total, all back-illuminated by the
Sun, along with three full Moons in-between. This means that the
picture may be telling us about three monthly phase cycles of
our Moon, starting on April 25 and ending on July 7:
What
could be more clever? They tell us about
three lunar
months, and also tell
where they
are watching us from, in a single picture!
P.S. In this new drawing at Morgan’s Hill, our crop artist
friends have once again used the principle of “orbital
superposition”. There any single orbit (say the thin circle
shown for our Moon) may be illustrated at several different
calendar times, and then all of those orbits (three in this
case) will be
laid on
top of one another: just like for several
sheets of clear transparencies, or as for layers in the
modern Photoshop program. That explains why each “full Moon”
has been drawn as a completely-lit open circle, rather than
as a partially-lit half-circle: because each full-Moon image
represents the
superposition of three half-lit circles at
angles of 0o, 120o or 240o
as illuminated by those “three Suns”. See the outer circles
at Longwood Warren 1995 (time2007j)
or Gander Down 1995 (time2007a)
for other examples from the past.
