February 2020
Rizel Park, Philippines
|
Villa Sol, Algarve, Portugal
|
Welwyn Garden City
|
January 2020
Olympic Park, Stratford
|
Swansea, Wales
|
Stratford, England
|
Measure To The Moon - Project Update, May 2020
by our Exeter University pathways intern Natalie Kwan
We wanted to report back how close a result we got from our Measure to the Moon parallax project.
We made 3 attempts and all the images can be viewed on our Facebook page.
The first in February:
We had a good response but mainly from the UK, the furthest image we had to use as a baseline for the Parallax was from Portugal, we saw this as a trial run. The resulting distance we calculated was 271734km and the Moon was 360461km away from Earth, so we were a whopping 24.6% out.
The second in March:
We got lots of images to use for the March attempt, including some lovely ones from the Abu Dhabi Observatory and one form the Philippines which really helped us get a better idea of the parallax shift. This resulted in a calculated distance of 340014km, the Moon at that time was 357122km away so just a 5.03% difference, which we thought was pretty amazing.
The third in April:
The final attempt in April was marred by clouds here in the UK, although I had clear skies in the southwest. We did have a number of US observers taking part including members of Flagstaff and Joe Pasachoff in New York, which made the whole thing seem pretty international. We got a resulting distance of 315736km, the Moon at this date was 356906km away, so we had a difference of 11.5% – pretty respectable.
So overall the second attempt had the closest result. There were lots of lessons learnt along the way, but we were pleased with the results. We really enjoyed this and may run something similar in the Autumn.
We followed Ernie Wrights methodology http://www.etwright.org/astro/moonpar.html
Our Mayes Creative mathematics intern, Charlie Kennett, wrote a short computer program which scale plated all the images and came up with averages. And then made all the calculations with guidance from Carolyn Kennett.
If you have enjoyed this maybe you may like to check out the following, which eminent astronomer Jay Pasachoff shared with us.
Pasachoff, Jay M., Bernd Gährken, and Glenn Schneider, 2017, “Using the 2016 transit of Mercury to find the distance to the Sun,” The Physics Teacher 55, 3 (March), 137-141: cover illustration plus article: http://doi.org/10.1119/1.4976653
Alan Stern et al., New Horizons team, from beyond Pluto: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20200417
We wanted to report back how close a result we got from our Measure to the Moon parallax project.
We made 3 attempts and all the images can be viewed on our Facebook page.
The first in February:
We had a good response but mainly from the UK, the furthest image we had to use as a baseline for the Parallax was from Portugal, we saw this as a trial run. The resulting distance we calculated was 271734km and the Moon was 360461km away from Earth, so we were a whopping 24.6% out.
The second in March:
We got lots of images to use for the March attempt, including some lovely ones from the Abu Dhabi Observatory and one form the Philippines which really helped us get a better idea of the parallax shift. This resulted in a calculated distance of 340014km, the Moon at that time was 357122km away so just a 5.03% difference, which we thought was pretty amazing.
The third in April:
The final attempt in April was marred by clouds here in the UK, although I had clear skies in the southwest. We did have a number of US observers taking part including members of Flagstaff and Joe Pasachoff in New York, which made the whole thing seem pretty international. We got a resulting distance of 315736km, the Moon at this date was 356906km away, so we had a difference of 11.5% – pretty respectable.
So overall the second attempt had the closest result. There were lots of lessons learnt along the way, but we were pleased with the results. We really enjoyed this and may run something similar in the Autumn.
We followed Ernie Wrights methodology http://www.etwright.org/astro/moonpar.html
Our Mayes Creative mathematics intern, Charlie Kennett, wrote a short computer program which scale plated all the images and came up with averages. And then made all the calculations with guidance from Carolyn Kennett.
If you have enjoyed this maybe you may like to check out the following, which eminent astronomer Jay Pasachoff shared with us.
Pasachoff, Jay M., Bernd Gährken, and Glenn Schneider, 2017, “Using the 2016 transit of Mercury to find the distance to the Sun,” The Physics Teacher 55, 3 (March), 137-141: cover illustration plus article: http://doi.org/10.1119/1.4976653
Alan Stern et al., New Horizons team, from beyond Pluto: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20200417
Measure To The Moon - Community Participation Social Media Project
Call for Participation
Thurs 27th Feb 2020: 7:30pm (local time)
Sat 28th March 2020: 8:00pm (local time)
Tuesday April 28th April 2020: 9:30pm (local time)
Sat 28th March 2020: 8:00pm (local time)
Tuesday April 28th April 2020: 9:30pm (local time)
This was a fun opportunity to learn about the original parallax measurement project of 1769, using modern cameras
Key points:
We all need to take a photo on the same date and at as close to the same time as possible.
Please send your results (ideally time-stamped) to us via twitter, instagram, facebook (@mayescreative) or email. Or click on icons below for direct links.
Key points:
We all need to take a photo on the same date and at as close to the same time as possible.
Please send your results (ideally time-stamped) to us via twitter, instagram, facebook (@mayescreative) or email. Or click on icons below for direct links.
Photography tips and info sheet below, created by our Exeter University Intern Natalie Kwan
