I thought he looked a little squinty eyed while he was howling at the moon.

I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand
Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain
He was looking for the place called Lee Ho Fook's
Going to get a big dish of beef chow mein
Werewolves of London

If you hear him howling around your kitchen door
Better not let him in
Little old lady got mutilated late last night
Werewolves of London again
Werewolves of London

He's the hairy handed gent who ran amuck in Kent
Lately he's been overheard in Mayfair
Better stay away from him
He'll rip your lungs out, Jim
I'd like to meet his tailor
Werewolves of London

Well, I saw Lon Chaney walking with the Queen
Doing the werewolves of London
I saw Lon Chaney, Jr. walking with the Queen
Doing the werewolves of London
I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's
His hair was perfect
Werewolves of London again
Draw blood

I love that part.

Remember singing to that song in the car? Early '80's.

Gonna get that song, and play it in my brand, spankin', new to me, Hyundai Santa Fe.

...with the moon roof open, and a full moon in the sky so bright I'll have to wear shades.

Whoo-hooo!

or should I say,

woof woof. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Werewolves of London was DD19's favorite song when she was really little. She loved to howl with Warren. It was very funny.

Of course she would dance around and try to sing with "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" too.

Maybe I needed to attend more parenting classes. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

Funny, Chrisner!

Did you see that graycloud went to a murder ballads concert on valentines day?

LOL

...where he watched a group of crows sing sad songs...

-ol' 2long

For about a month after he told us that, my mind searched it's memory bank for murder ballads.

Forced myself to stop after singing "we're so sorry, uncle Albert, but we haven't done a bloody thing all day" to myself all day.

Remember that one?

Weedo weedo weedo chipchip get around, get your feet back on the ground, weedo weedo get around.

That was a sick one. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

As for magic:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/image-details.cfm?imageID=2156

Leonardo da vinci explained the earthshine phenomena 500 years ago, and old 2 long just told me about it last night. Wonder what else I've been missing?

ok, no one else has done it, so I will...

On certain nights
When the angles are right
And the moon is a slender crescent

It's circle shows
In a ghostly glow
Of earthly luminescence

Earthshine
A beacon in the night
I can raise my eyes to
Earthshine
Earthshine
A jewel out of reach
Form a dream to rise to
Earthshine

Floating high
In the evening sky
I see my faint reflection

Pale facsimile
Like what others see
When they look in my direction

Earthshine
Stretching out your hand
Full of starlit diamonds
Earthshine

Reflected light
To another's sight
And the moon tells a lover's story

My borrowed face
And my third-hand grace
Only reflect your glory

You're still out of reach
Form a dream to rise to
Earthshine

http://www.rush.com/

http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=3153

<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

And the magic word is "albedo". The moon has the highest albedo of all the major objects in the solar system.

Whoah! The moon is DARK. Venus has the highest albedo of any planet in the solar system.

As for Earth:

Vangelis, "Albedo, 0.39"

"Maximum distance from the sun: 94 million 537 thousand miles

Minimum distance from the sun: 91 million 377 thousand miles

Mean distance from the sun: 92 million 957 thousand and 200 miles

Mean Orbital velocity: 66000 miles per hour

Orbital eccentricity: 0.017

Obliquity of the ecliptic: 23 degrees 27 minutes 8.26 seconds

Length of the tropical year: equinox to equinox 365.24 days

Lenght of the sidereal year: fixed star to fixed star 365.26 days

Length of the mean solar day: 24 hours and 3 minutes and 56.5555 seconds at mean solar time

Length of the mean sidereal day: 23 hours and 56 minutes and 4.091 seconds at mean sederial time

Mass: 6600 million million million tons

Equatorial diameter: 7927 miles

Polar diameter: 7900 miles

Oblateness: one 298th

Density: 5.41

Mean surface gravitational acceleration of the rotating earth: 32.174 feet per second per second

Escape velocity: 7 miles per second


Albedo: 0.39
Albedo: 0.39
Albedo: 0.39
Albedo: 0.39
Albedo: 0.39
Albedo: 0.39
Albedo: 0.39"

-ol' 2long

ooh, I forgot about Venus. And someone better edit wikipedia.
Maybe they meant highest of all moons.

Anyway, it's still the magic word.

I feel like Zippy, walking around repeating albedo albedo, albedo, albedo, and achieving existential consciousness.

Or something.

Albedo: (100% reflective would be an albedo of 1.0)

Mercury: 0.11
Venus: 0.65
Earth: 0.367
Moon: 0.07
Mars: 0.15
Jupiter: 0.52
Sa2rn: 0.47
Uranus: 0.51
Nep2ne: 0.41
Pluto (though it doesn't count anymore!): 0.49-0.66 (depending on season)

Now, THAT is magical!

-ol' 2long

Somebody needs to cut back on the chips.

"The following is a list of the "visual normal albedo at 5% phase angle" of various lunar features. These numbers can be used to directly compare to terrestrial surfaces (reference cited below):

Darkest areas: 8.6%
Tranquillitatis south of Plinius: 9.1%
Plato's floor: 9.6%
Serenitatis east of Linne: 10%
Imbrium south of Plato: 10.4%
Nectaris: 11.4%
Ptolemaeus floor: 13.1%
Arzachel: 17%
Tycho ejecta: 20%
Aristarchus: 20%
Aristarchus interior: 22%
Bright spot in Deslandres: 24%
Proclus E wall: 28%
Stevinus A, Abulfeda E: 30%

These values are, as you can see, considerably higher than the other lunar albedos given. For comparison, the albedo of a green golf course is about 13%, roughly the same as that of the Cayley Formation which covers the floor of Ptolemaeus. So you see, the moon is not quite as dark as is often claimed - something about in the middle range of lunar brightnesses is just as bright as a grassy yard at noon."

Ref: British Astronomical Association, Guide to Observing the Moon, Enslow 1986

This could get messy.

Now look what you've done, Believer. Geeks running amok.

The Sponge Monkeys

We Love The Moon

Lunar Albedo
by Jeff Medkeff

A lot of confusing statements are made about the albedo of the moon. The moon is, according to various accounts, "darker than blacktop" or "darker than a black sheet of construction paper." A generous person might characterize statements like these as damned lies.

Neither blacktop or construction paper have the special characteristics of the moon. Besides, both materials can be found in colors that actually range from light gray to nearly black, so unless you specify a brand of construction paper, or a particular mile of highway, the assertion is next to meaningless even if it weren't untrue.

Albedo is given in a variety of definitions, and the blacktop analogy is the result of the abuse of a couple of such definitions. Without knowing the definition that is used, its impossible to be sure you are comparing apples to apples. The simplest version of albedo is the Lambert albedo. A Lambert surface is one which scatters light isotropically - in other words, an equal intensity of light is scattered in all directions; it doesn't matter whether you measure it from directly above the surface or off to the side. The photometer will give you the same reading.

For a lambert planetary surface, the illumination effects are entirely geometric. The brightest illumination is directly below the sun, and the amount of light reflected diminishes the farther you get from this point, simply because the sunlight is played along a greater arc of the surface. The illumination isophotes will be round. Unfortunately, the moon is not a Lambert surface.

For one thing, the subsolar point does not provide the brightest reflection - the limb does. And the phase curve has a sharp peak in brightness during full moon - the moon is extra reflective at full compared to first quarter. Attempts were once made to explain this in terms of a Lambert surface with various kinds of topography, but this does not work out.

It is now known that this departure from a Lambert surface is caused by the very porous first few millimeters of the lunar regolith. Sunlight can penetrate the surface and illuminate subsurface grains, the scattered light from which can make its way back out in any direction. At full phase, all such grains cover their own shadows; the dark shadows being covered by bright grains, the surface is brighter than normal.

The picture is further complicated by the fact that the perfectly full moon is never visible from Earth (at such times, the moon is eclipsed). From the Apollo missions, we know that the exact subsolar point - in effect, the fullest possible moon - is some 30% brighter than the fullest moon seen from earth. It is thought that this is caused by glass beads formed by impact in the lunar regolith, which tend to reflect light in the direction from which it comes. This light is therefore reflected back toward the sun, bypassing earth.

The original definition of albedo, proposed by Bond, is the ratio of total solar radiation scattered from a body to the radiation incident upon it. The Bond albedo of the moon is 11%. But limiting this figure to V-band radiation produces quite a different value. The average visual Bond albedo of the earth-facing side of the moon is 7.2%.

This is what has led to the often repeated statement that the moon is blacker than even very black terrestrial materials. Flocked paper, often used in light traps and as telescope darkening material, has an albedo of about 6%, for example. But the low Bond albedo of 7.2% is the result of the porous upper layers, which cast shadows over a substantial percentage of the visible surface. No common terrestrial material has a similar layer, so it isn't useful for comparison purposes. So the black construction paper theory and the asphalt theory simply have to be abandoned.

Another definition is the visual geometric albedo, which is the proportion of visible light received from an illuminated body at zero phase angle to that which would be received by a Lambert surface in the same position. For the moon, the full moon problem again intrudes. The visual geometric albedo of the full moon is 12.5%, but much less at other phases.

Because it is very difficult to measure this value, the visual geometric albedo at 5% phase angle is often used instead. That should be self-explanatory; the value for the moon is about 8.4%. But it can't be used to compare with terrestrial materials for the same reason the Bond albedo cannot.

Yet another definition - and by far the most useful for observers - is the visual normal albedo. This is the ratio between the brightness of a given area of an illuminated body at zero phase angle and oriented normal to the incident light, to that of a plane white Lambert surface similarly oriented. But normal incidence is never seen from earth (remember, the moon would be eclipsed), so they've introduced the "normal albedo at 5% phase angle" instead - which is a contradiction in terms, but I suppose we know what it is supposed to mean.

------

If this doesn't save marriages, I don't know what will.

Show off!

Chrisner, I think Ap and 2long are the sponge monkeys diguised.

They REALLY love that moon!