re: Red Moon over Glamour

From: Andrew Barton <AndrewBarton_at_compuserve.com>
Date: Wed, 26 May 2004 10:24:27 -0400


Mikko Rintasaari:
> So when you are far-far away, the moon looks smaller (duh!),

Joerg Baumgartner:
> Doesn't. Or at least, to be that far-far away, you'll have to leave the=

> Middle World entirely.

> In the real world, we experience both sun and moon as subjectively larg=
er
> when close to the horizon. However, if we have a disk which covers the
> moon (or the sun, which by a very strange fluke appears to be the same
> size) in its entirety at is highest point, held at arms length, we will=

> find that it does equally so when on the horizon.

You can't apply those real-world effects to Glorantha. Earth's Sun alway= s
seems to cover the same angle wherever it is in the sky because it's at a=

great distance, over twenty thousand times as far away as the radius of t= he
Earth. IF Earth's optical rules applied in Glorantha, the Red Moon would=

indeed look smaller as you got further away.

Our Sun's apparent size does vary slightly according to where Earth is in=

its orbit. You can't normally detect this with the naked eye, but 'annular' eclipses occur at times when the apparent size of the Sun is at=

its largest and the Moon does not cover it completely.

Andrew

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