Image source: Merlina McGovern
Today’s Inktober prompt was Celestial. And for me, there are no better concepts to illustrate this term than the sun and the moon. The current moon phase where I am is 70.8% Waxing Gibbous, which means that it is well on its way to being a full moon on October 28. From a website describing the different phases of the moon, I learned that the term “gibbous” comes from the Latin for “humped,” a description that seems to very clunkily depict the luminous curve of the moon.
As it grows closer to being full, we think of werewolves shedding their human skins to indulge in their beastly desires. We may think of the power of women swelling in conjunction with the growing moonlight. We may also think about people going moon crazy and committing more crimes or getting into more traffic accidents. However, most studies don’t bear out these old folk tales tying a full moon with an increase in actual lunacy. From that linked article, there are only a few studies that tenuously connect the increased light that a full moon provides with disrupted sleep patterns and perhaps an increase in the amount of people out at night because they can better see with the additional light illuminating a darkened world.
While the moon may not have the ability to turn our logical human minds into snarling beasts, it does have the magnificent power to affect our earthly tides. Due to its gravitational pull interacting with the earth’s own gravity, our mighty oceans bulge in the areas furthest from and closest to the moon, creating areas of high tides in the bulges and low tides in the thinned-out waters.
Now, these tides aren’t simply the result of the power of the moon’s gravitational pull alone. The sun also plays a part in this process. When the earth, the moon, and the sun are in the correct alignment, the bulges become extra large, leading to massive spring tides.
Ah, the power of the sun. It is a brilliant burning ball of gas nearly 100 million miles away from the earth (93 million miles to be more precise). This source of all of our earthly energy is more than four billion years old and is considered to be a yellow-dwarf star composed of swirling, whirling hydrogen and helium gasses.
The sun is warm and bright and brings light and life to our planet. As massive as it is, it can’t escape the power of the moon, and last week, we experienced an annular solar eclipse. This occurs when the moon blocks out the sun as it passes between the earth and the sun at its furthest point away from the earth. That is, the moon is far enough away from the earth in its orbit that it doesn’t quite cover the entire sun when it blocks it, leading to what many refer to as a “ring of fire” to appear burning brightly around the shadow of the moon.
Just as there are a variety of myths surrounding full moons, there are also a variety of myths surrounding solar eclipses. So many that still persist in fact that NASA has an entire page debunking some of these, including the fact that an eclipse won’t harm a pregnant woman’s baby, it won’t poison food that you’ve prepared, and it doesn’t portend an impending death.
While there is no real scientific validity surrounding these moon and sun myths, I still find that both fill me with a sense of awe and amazement. And while the feel of the sun’s warm rays on my skin can instantly fill me with a sense of joy and happiness, I am definitely more drawn to the cool and mysterious glow of the moon. The moon, that glowing orb that wanders our nightly sky, shows us the regular cycle of death and birth and gives us continuing hope that no matter how dark our darkest days are, there will always be a return to light.
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