Help me measure the distance to the Moon!
On the evening of 10 June 2014, the Moon will appear approximately five degrees away from the planet Saturn. At that time, I would like to get some help measuring the distance to the Moon. What I need are pictures of the Moon and Saturn taken at approximately the same time from as many different locations as possible.
- Set your camera up on a tripod for best image quality.
- Make sure that the picture you take has both the Moon and Saturn in it, and that the focus is as good as you can make it.
- Email me the picture along with the time you took it (+/- 5 minutes) and your location (latitude and longitude, +/- 20 miles).
It'd be best if all images could be taken at appoximately the same time. Let's make this time 04:00 UTC (which would actually make it early morning 11 June in England), which is 21:00 PDT, 22:00 MDT, 23:00 CDT, and 00:00 EDT for the United States.
I did some test images with my little digital camera just set on 'Auto' and got some decent data looking at the Moon and Venus, and the Moon and Jupiter:
|
Figure 1: Moon and Venus |
|
Figure 2: Moon and Jupiter |
Email me your data (pictures) at cosmiclettuce AT yahoo DOT com.