anyone else notice...
 

so the past couple nights whenever i'm driving somewhere or just whenever i'm outside at night.. i see the moon.. and for the past couple nights its been red... like blood red... and huge... a lot bigger than it normally is here...

i was just wondering if anyone else has noticed this.. and if there is a reason why this is happening... me and my friends think its pretty creepy though...

air pollution

no but where I live the northen lights were out like crazy and it was good

are you by any chance from BC? :)

Forest fires or air pollution usually cause this.

oOo i've always wanted to see the aurora borealis. harvest moons are pretty

Not where I live. I love it when the moon is red.

Yeah, I don't know about the moon, but noticed that the sunsets are really deep red in color the more air pollution there is in the atmosphere.

I got an e-mail from my aunt...thought it was some kinda stupid chain letter...but it was actually something about mars is going to be the clostest to the earth it has been in possibly 5000 years and it won't happen again in anyone's lifetime that will be here to see it. I can't remote into my other desktop atm...or I would copy and paste...I believe it will be most noticable on Aug. 25th 2003, at 12:30 eastern (I think...) and you will be able to see it right next to the moon at only like a 4x zoom...

I am gonna see if I can find anything like the e-mail she sent me...who knows..maybe it was just something stupid she sent...we will see...


edit: Ask and ye shall recieve: http://www.space.com/spacewatch/mars...ew_021108.html

Theres just one link...there's more tho if anyone is interested...and I didn't read far into it..so I am not really sure that would be why the moon seems red...some people call it blood on the moon as in bad forture..and some call it a harvest moon...bringing a bounty...I don't get to see it much like that being in the city..but when I visit family this time of year out in the 'country' it's beautiful!!

my friend said mars is the closest it's been since the neanderthals. wow. i got that email too but skimmed over it since it was a dumb fwd. so i was surprised when my friend informed me :P

i know what this looks like... usually from the bushfires.

its an incredible sight.

not last christmas, but the one before... i remember that the air was so think with the bushfire smoke where we were having a family lunch (in cronulla), that everything was totally orange in appearance.

being an asthmatic, the smoky air is actually quite worrying for me.

The cheese in the moon is moldy

Mars is close to Earth. I haven't had a chance to try and find it yet. I've heard that it's to the left of the moon, about 45 degrees down. if that makes sense.

As others have said there are a number of large forest fires in the west. The particulates that have been tossed into the air are causing the moon to appear red and the sunsets to be spectacular.

the moon rising late in the evening is always spectacular...

Sturgeon Moon
August 12, 2003, 12:48 a.m. EDT

A time when this large fish of the Great Lakes and other major bodies of water like Lake Champlain is most readily caught. A few tribes knew it as the Full Red Moon, because the moon rises looking reddish through sultry haze, or the Green Corn Moon or Grain Moon.


From ...
http://www.space.com/spacewatch/full..._030214-8.html

The Summer of Mysterious Red Moon

A devout SPACE.com fan from Northern California (okay, she's the mother of the writer of this item) e-mailed overnight to share a sky observation: "The setting Sun was bright red, and we just looked at the Moon and it's just as red," she said. "First time I've noticed a setting Moon that was so red."

She knew the basic reason: Forest fires had been burning in the region for weeks and a new one had just started up a few miles away. But people wonder about the specifics. During fires earlier this summer in the Southwest, the National Weather Service got lots of inquiries about the discolored Moon and redder-than-normal sunsets.

Here's the science: Shorter wavelengths of light (like blue) are scattered by dust particles more than longer wavelengths (like red). If the atmosphere is clear or the Moon (or Sun) high overhead, most all the light gets through and we see a white object. When the object is near the horizon, its light travels through more atmosphere to reach our eyes. Add smoke, stir, and the blue can't get through. That solved, check out these cool Mysteries of the Sun.

From...

http://www.space.com/astronotes/astr...2-aug18-1.html


Goto http://www.space.com/spacewatch/where_is_mars.html

for lots of info on where Mars is.

Same here. Somehow I think that still photos and video images don't do any justice. I would love to see it someday.

I don't think it was just the forest fire smoke... I was at Ocean City, NJ last week, and the moon was a dark reddish orange for a few days. I don't think the forest fire smoke would effect it that far away. But I could be wrong...

It's a deep yellow/orange where I am. Also, someone else posted it too, but I wonder if it could have anything to do with the Mars being so close to earth thing?

Didn't read the entire thread but the answer is MARS. It is the closest to Earth it has been in the last 600 years.

It is really amazing. I would describe it as curtains of light that wave through the sky. I saw it in detail one time when I was still in college. I was living in Wisconsin at the time and was just north of Milwaukee. That's pretty far south for the aurora to be seen. Your best bet to see it is to go to Alaska. You'll want to go late fall through early spring as the days get really long in the summer time and there's not as much of a chance to see them then. Plus the cold winter nights means there's not as much moisture to cause cloud cover. Then again who wants to visit Alaska in the winter time? ;)

I walked out my front porch and looked up and saw red!
bigtime.
Mars is hot!
take a look...

I was up in Maine the past week, the moon looked normal to me.

looked good to me, might just be air pollution from fires or maybe the clouds

yes i know about this alaska. those lucky alaskans! and i just walked out my porch too and saw mars. wow!

About the Mars thing, I believe it's supposed to be closest sometime Wednesday night? Correct me if I'm wrong. And I think it is going to be the closest to Earth for about 59k years. But once again, this is coming from memory.

re: aurora borealis

When I first moved to Canada's Yukon Territory (Alaska's next door neighbor) I spent the first weeks living in a cabin which did not yet have a roof. I was sleeping in my sleeping bag, and woke up one night to THE MOST amazing sight I have ever seen.

The aurora borealis were out and brighter than I had ever, or ever since have seen. I climbed up onto the roof beams of the unfinished cabin with my sleeping bag, and crawled back in. I just lay there for an hour or more watching the amazing light show.

The light spears seemed to be dropping so low in the sky, that I feared the sharp points would stab into me. My brain knew better, but it was still a weird feeling.

I'll never forget that night for the rest of my life.

When I was a kid I was huge into astronomy. I would always be jealous of those who lived in regions where the northern lights were active. Then, I got stationed in North Dakota. My first night there, in late May, I went outside to smoke a cigarette. It hadn't even occurred to me that I would be able to see them in ND. I'm standing outside on a clear night and looked up.

At first it was a little difficult to see because it was still twilight. As it grows a little darker, it suddenly seems as if I'm in the middle of a conical tent. The lights were radiating from what seemed like a point directly above me and just billowing down almost to the horizon. They would change from white to pale red and pale green. Their movement was ghostly. It was one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen.

Could be Mars.

It's too bad that the governments of the world didn't care more about space exploration. If properly funded, we could've sent a human crew to Mars seeing how it is so close now. Now is the best time to send a crew because of the reduced travel time. That is a missed opportunity. Oh well.

Could be the smoke. There are a LOT of trees going up in BC and no real rain to wash the particulate out.
--
* In February, the Consumer Product Safety Commission ended
five years of deliberation on what to do about five-gallon
buckets, which it deemed dangers to toddlers who might fall into
them and drown. In May 1994, the agency tentatively had
decided to order manufacturers to redesign the buckets.
However, it has now decided merely to require warnings on the
pails, [Rock Island Argus-Chicago Tribune, 2-12-95]

It's not mars at all, how could it be?! Mars doesn't cast enough light on the moon to give it any reddish color in the first place, and if it did, the red light would be shining on the opposite side of the moon from us because the moon is in between mars and us!