Earlier this week as I crawled into bed and gazed into the mirror closet doors, there was the reflection of a huge, orange half moon, illuminating our dark room. Wow! I don’t recall seeing the moon in our mirror before. The high window at the gable end of our house allowed the harvest moon’s image to be cast inside our room and onto the mirror. Funny, but when I looked directly up and through the high window at the night sky I couldn’t see the moon.

Well I’ve got to get a closer look at this moon, I thought. So out of bed I climbed and went outside leaving all the lights off. As I stood at the edge of the porch there it hung in space. And there I saw for the first time the silhouette of a man on the right side of the half moon! It was a stick man with two legs and a torso like a roman soldier from biblical times or an archer from Robin Hood’s merry clan. I don’t know what man in the moon other people have seen, but I was delighted to finally see the fellow for myself.

Later, I did a little investigating. Rather than a full person depicted on the moon’s surface, the man in the moon generally refers to a human face with two eyes and nose and a mouth showing up. The face’s eyes are the Mare Imbrium and Mare Serenitatis. Its nose is the Sinus Aestuum, and its open mouth is the Mare Nubium and Mare Cognitum. Where you are in the world affects what you see silhouetted on the moon. Some cultures see the silhouette of a woman, a rabbit or even a buffalo. Most always these images are seen on the full moon.

The next full moon is this weekend. On Saturday or Sunday be sure to look for the fellow in the night sky if he doesn’t appear in your mirror! But why wait, look for the fellow I saw on the right side of the moon tonight. And for those of you that don’t want to wait until dark to look at the moon, thanks to the internet you can have a look now!

Log onto the US Naval Observatory’s website. The current appearance of the moon is updated multiple times daily. Go to http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/ and click on What the Moon Looks Like Today for a close-up view of the moon. Another really fun site that points out silhouettes on the moon is http://home.hiwaay.net/~krcool/Astro/moon/mim.htm.

Happy Moon Watching,
© Deborah Tukua,
www.hollycreekbooks.com

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