Silent Sunday ...and the Supermoon

(photo taken with my old Nokia N95)

Silent Sunday ...a day later

....and because I love the Moon....

The Eagle Has Landed!

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first astronauts to land on the Moon. After a day spent exploring the Moon's surface, the two members of the Apollo 11 mission returned to Earth. It has been estimated that 500 million people across the world watched the video broadcast of the Moon landing. I was only very little at the time and we didn’t even own a TV set but I remember clearly those first black & white images on our neighbors’ TV and those foreign words (to me at least at the time) that Armstrong pronounced when he first set foot on the Moon. Since then the Moon has become a great passion of mine and will always be.

Where were you that day (if you are at least as old as I am) and what can you still remember?

I Love the Moon

Since I was a child I always been fascinated by the Moon. As far as I can remember I wanted to become an astronaut. When I realized it was not possible I wanted to study astronomy until I found out that at University you spend most of your time studying maths and physics rather than in front of a telescope. And that was not for me.

Still the Moon remains my passion and my object of interest. A couple of days/nights ago a beautiful phenomenon occurred involving the Moon and planet Venus: a conjunction. A conjunction is the name given to occasions when two or more celestial bodies come close to one-another in the sky. They are never physically close, of course - conjunctions are simply a "line-of-sight" effect when objects just happen to be in the same area of sky as seen from Earth

My friend Roberto was so clever to be able to capture it over my hometown sky in Italy. See his pictures above and below.

And more or less at the same time the lovely Juliet of Crafty Green Poet posted this beautiful poem about the Moon, my dear Moon.

marzipan moon rises slowly

through rusting clouds

shrinking herself paler

until she sits white

high in the sky

the lights of a plane

flash on and off

below her.

Thanks Roberto and thanks Juliet. These are what I call the small joys of life...