[Music]
Hello everyone and welcome to "In the
Cosmos" from the De Anza College
Planetarium for May 27, 2020.
My name is Toshi Komatsu and I'm your
host and the director of the planetarium.
This week's highlight is all about the
Moon, so let's go ahead and take a look
without any further ado. We're looking
here at the sky on May 29th at 8:30 p.m.
local time, and you can see that the Sun
here has just set not that long ago. But,
if you look up and to the left about 90
degrees away from the Sun, is where you
can find the planetarium Moon there. And
you can see that it's sort of got this
half-moon shape. A lot of people call it a
half-moon but, in fact, we call it a
quarter moon because remember the Moon
is actually not round like a plate, but
round like a ball. So, what we're looking
at is actually half of a half, which
makes a quarter. Now we're going to go ahead
and speed up time here a little bit and
we're going to skip ahead to about
9:15, or so, when it gets a little bit
darker and you can see that the Moon is
right between a couple of stars there.
We have Regulus, which means "the King's
star", and Denebola, which is "the tail." And
it is the heart and the tail of a
constellation which you've probably
heard of before, kind of looks like a
broken coat hanger there, but it's also
known as Leo the Lion. And, indeed, it
looks like tonight Leo has swallowed up
the Moon and we've got the Moon right in
the belly of the lion there. Now, when
looking at the Moon,
quarter moon is a fantastic time to be
looking at the Moon because the Moon
isn't too bright like a full moon. And, if
we zoom in here and you look right along
the terminator, which is the boundary
between night and day; sort of that dark
line dividing night and day here. You
can get a lot of fabulous detail here.
For example, there's a very nice crater
over here. Up a little bit higher, there's
a nice mountain range. And these craters
and these mountains, they cast shadows
which can give real definition to the
surface as a 3D terrain. Now if you miss
the moon on the 29th, that's ok. Just
don't wait too long before the full Moon,
when the Moon is much brighter
and there are less shadows. Well, that's
it for this edition of "In the Cosmos."
I hope you enjoyed that and learned a
little something. If you could be so kind as
to "like" the video and follow us on
YouTube, we'd very much appreciate it.
You can find out more information about
the Planetetarium on our website and find
more astronomical goodness on our social
media. We're available on Facebook,
Instagram and Twitter. You can check out
the links in the description below. For
now, this is the De Anza College
Planetarium wishing you clear, dark
skies and signing off until next time.
