Lunar

Barbara Marks of Ellicott City asks: "Has there ever been a blue moon in February?" Depends on your definition. The modern "blue moon" is the second full moon in any month. But since the lunar cycle takes at least 29.2 days, not even a leap year February has room for two. In 1999, February had no full moon at all. An older definition is the third full moon in a season with four. That occurs in seven out of 19 years, always in February, May, August or November.

A summer before, the nation had paused in its grief and gathered around TVs to watch Robert F. Kennedy's funeral services and the passage of the special train that conveyed his remains from New York City to Washington for burial in Arlington National Cemetery.A little over a year later, on July 20, 1969, Marylanders and people across the nation once again clustered around televisions and radios in living rooms and bars and other public places to follow the hair-raising progress of astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Col. Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. and Lt. Col. Michael Collins as they sped through space on Apollo 11 and prepared to land on the surface of the moon.

A Maryland astronomer working in a back yard near Mount Airy during last month's Leonid meteor shower has been credited with making the first confirmed pictures of meteors smashing into the moon.David Dunham of Greenbelt said a starlike flash on the videotape he shot Nov. 17 closely matches the time of a flash seen independently from Texas. Since then, his tape has confirmed five more impacts videotaped independently by Leonid-watchers in Texas, Mexico and Maryland."I think this is the nail in the coffin," said Dunham, a space mission designer at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel.

You have scaled Hawaiian volcanoes to watch an eclipse. You've bounced in Chinese trucks across the Gobi Desert, looking for dinosaur eggs. You have ridden a mountain bike through the Yucatan to explore vine-choked ruins. So what's next for the extreme tourist?The moon?It could happen, though the trip might depend more on private enterprise than government. Now that the Cold War is over, Congress' enthusiasm for man in space rises no higher than a scaled-down space station. It might require private enterprise's instinct for profit, and an adventurer's sense of excitement and curiosity to get travelers back to the moon.

Where were you 25 years ago today, when men walked on the moon for the first time?Most people remember distinctly what they were doing when that momentous event occurred. A series of Apollo moon missions culminated on July 16, 1969, with astronaut Neil Armstrong opening the hatch of the lunar lander Eagle and clambering down a ladder to set foot on lunar soil with the historic words, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."The Apollo landings were a technological and scientific tour de force and the centerpiece of NASA's $25 billion manned space program of the 1960s.

Kensington. -- On June 3, 1965, Edward H. White II was the first American to ''walk'' in space. In the photograph I have of Mr. White drifting in space, the sun is a brilliant highlight on his face shield, and most of the direct light on his spacesuit is from the sun. The rest of the light is reflected sunlight from the earth -- earthshine, as it were. If the earth were farther away, say a million miles, the areas of his suit not directly lighted by the sun would be as black as space itself.

It was one of the most dramatic moments in the history of television, when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon, and the image was beamed to more than a billion viewers via a tiny camera built in Linthicum.And despite the 25 years that have passed today, Stanley Lebar, the 71-year-old Severna Park resident who headed a team of Westinghouse Electric Corp. engineers and technicians who developed the camera, remembers the excitement as if it were yesterday.Seeing an astronaut coming down the ladder from the lunar landing module "was overwhelming," he said.

HOUSTON -- When the last Apollo astronaut's memory has blurred, the only real evidence of humanity's first venture to another world will be a cache of gray rocks in a guarded vault that proves Earth and the moon, however distant, are one.Twenty-five years after the Apollo 11 astronauts returned to Earth with the first bag of moon rocks, 65 scientists around the world still are using NASA's unique collection of lunar samples to analyze the history of Earth's...

The appearance of a bright star beside the crescent moon makes a striking sight, one that at least five Islamic countries have worked into their national flags.Tomorrow evening, if the weather cooperates, Marylanders will be able to see the same image beautifully displayed as a slender crescent moon and the brilliant planet Venus pass each other in the evening sky."Teamed up, they can attract notice even from the most nose-to-the-ground pedestrian," said Herman Heyn, Baltimore's street-corner astronomer.

WASHINGTON -- Scientists are seeking to build huge telescopes on the surface of the moon.The proposal, astronomers said yesterday, offers the best chance of someday detecting planets around other stars and perhaps even signs of life on those planets.The moon is one of the best sites for both optical and radio astronomy, with significant advantages over both Earth-based and space-based telescopes, according to Bernard Burke, an astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mr. Burke outlined the possibilities for lunar astronomy in a talk at the World Space Congress here.

The world was able to share in the excitement of Neil Armstrong's "one small step for man" on July 20, 1969, thanks to the steps made by many on Earth, including Marylanders who played a part in the historic event. Stanley Lebar When Neil Armstrong descended the ladder from the lunar module, Stanley Lebar, a Westinghouse Electric Corp. engineer, was watching in a small lab at Mission Control in Houston. The historic images he and the rest of the world saw were thanks to a camera he had helped build.

NASA recently snatched headlines with the news of Charles Bolden's nomination as NASA's new administrator and the Atlantis shuttle crew's final upgrade of the Hubble telescope. Next, there will be numerous TV documentaries as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of man's first moon landing on July 20. Yet the news for NASA now is a pale comparison to 1969, when two Americans first stepped on the moon. Forty years later, we have to ask: What happened to man and woman on Mars and Venus? By now we thought we'd even be on the outer reaches of the solar system, to Pluto.

The last time NASA sent people to the moon, they landed somewhere near the moon's equator. It was simpler to get home from there and safer for those early missions. But as NASA plans to return astronauts to the moon in the coming decades, it is the moon's north and south poles that scientists and engineers are aiming for - drawn by the prospect of perpetual sunlight, water ice, intriguing geology and a gentler environment. Scientists at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Lab will help the agency prepare for those missions.

The full August moon was once known as the Fruit Moon, denoting its appearance while fruit is ripening on the trees. Last night's full moon was partially eclipsed during the afternoon, our time. At its peak, the Earth's shadow darkened about four-fifths of the moon's face as people from western China to western Europe watched. We in the New World were on the wrong side of the planet for this one. The next total lunar eclipse visible here will occur (numerologists take note) on 12/21/2010.

The moon will rise over Baltimore just before 8:30 p.m. tomorrow. Shortly after 10 p.m., astronomers say, it will be precisely full. As the third full moon after the vernal equinox, this is the Flower Moon, the Rose Moon or the Strawberry Moon. Luna is a terrific target for stargazers, especially through binoculars. But the moon's full phase is the worst time to look - too bright, too little contrast. Wait for a quarter moon or less, when long lunar shadows enhance details.

Stargazers are worried about the weather forecast, but if the clouds part in time, Marylanders will get a good look at tonight's total eclipse of the moon - the last one visible here or anywhere until December 2010. "Baltimore has experienced bad weather for the last few lunar eclipses," said Herman Heyn, Baltimore's original "Streetcorner Astronomer." Both of last year's eclipses were clouded-out here, but if the heavens are visible, Heyn plans to set up at 9 o'clock tonight in the 3100 block of St. Paul St. in Charles Village.

America is headed for the moon again, and Maryland scientists will be in the vanguard of the effort. NASA has chosen research teams from the University of Maryland, College Park and the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt to work on ideas for upgrading instruments that Apollo crews left behind in the lunar dust. Two other scientific proposals from area institutions - a small radio telescope array from the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, and a Goddard instrument to measure X-rays were also selected.

The moon nears its first-quarter phase tonight, the 38th anniversary of the first manned lunar landing. Look up. People walked there in 1969. Moonwalker No. 2, Buzz Aldrin, said in 1970, "We understood the significance what we were doing. I felt like we were not alone." They weren't. Millions of us watched, spellbound. Neil Armstrong, No. 1, told Life magazine of a recurring dream: "He was able to hover over the ground if he held his breath. ... It was a beautiful dream." It was.

A reader in Westminster wondered why the dark portion of the moon is not always round: "The moon goes through its phases because the Earth blocks part of the light from the sun. So, one would expect the shadow always to reflect the shape of the Earth, no?" Oops. Back to school. Earth's round shadow touches the moon only during lunar eclipses. The phases change as the moon orbits Earth. The dark portion of the lunar sphere we see is simply the side facing away from the sun.

Egad! My response last week to Fred Carcress of Catonsville, who asked about the next lunar eclipse, was wrong by 12 hours. Yank that one off the fridge and tear it up. Here's the real deal, I promise: The next total eclipse of the moon visible from Maryland begins at 4:50 A.M. on Aug. 28. The full moon will move deep into the Earth's shadow, but the show ends in mid-eclipse when the MOON sets here at 5:34 a.m. Thanks to all who set me straight.