The Moon's Orientation

Last month I noticed the full moon just as it was rising. The “Man in the Moon” seemed to be tilted about 45[sup]o[/sup] to the left of vertical. The next morning, as I went to my job (5:30 am), the setting moon had the MITM tilted about 90[sup]o[/sup] to the right of vertical. I realized that that was because my true direction of my “up” had changed almost 180[sup]o[/sup] in the intervining 12 hours.

Thinking about it more, I realized that the MITM must look upside-down in the Southern Hemisphere as compared to what I see in North America.

Question is: can the moon’s orientation “point” in every compass direction given its eccentric orbit and taking an observation point from any point on the Earth’s surface?

Sure it can. You don’t need eccentricity either, or even an orbit. Just imagine the moon in space above a point on the earth. Imagine a ring of observers centered around that point. Everyone will see the moon as vertically above the point that the moon is directly over. For observers on the north side of the ring, this will be to the south. For observers on the southeast side of the ring, the moon will be to the northwest. And so on.

The Moon’s orbit is not very eccentric, at all… also, it is more or less in the plane of the ecliptic, that is to say it is level with the orbit of the Earth and most of the other planets.
The Earth, however, is tipped over and rotates at an angle to it’s own orbit, and that of the moon -
so any irregularity you see in the angle of the Moon and the angle of the Man’s face (some say it is a rabbit, by the way) is due to the tilt of the Earth, not the Moon.

confused? I am…

The moon’s orientation never points in a different “compass direction”; rather, your perception of which compass direction is “up” changes based on your location and the moon’s position in the sky.

In other words, the features on the northern part of the moon always appear to be northerly–that is, closer to the North Celestial Pole. In the Northern Hemisphere, where the moon typically rides halfway up in the southern sky, you perceive north as “up”. In the Southern Hemisphere, where the moon rides halfway up in the northern sky, you’d perceive south as “up”. And when the moon is near the horizon, as you noticed in your example, you might perceive east or west as “up”, with the horizon always being “down”.

Can someone tell me which major craters (or seas) make up the “Man In The Moon”? Surprisingly, I’ve never been clear on this. As an amateur astronomer, many books are quicker to point out an profile image of a boy, “Jack” (of “Jack and Jill” fame carrying his pail of water…complete with a baseball cap on his head. (Then again, we all know what Freud saw…)

I’ll see if I can dig up my books which identify the craters which form “Jack”. I think it might surprise some SDopers to try looking for “Jack” after years of looking at it differently. IIRC, “Jack” is most prominent when the Moon is at (or near) 1st Quarter.

Never heard about the “Rabbit”. Is that British, perhaps? - Jinx

The Japanese see a rabbit making rice cakes according to my Japanese friend.

The “man in the moon” is made up of several 'maria" or “seas” which are large, dark, smooth areas. I’ll look up which ones although I’ll bet someone else will come up with the infor before I get to it.

After being told that there was a rabbit in the moon by a Japanese friend, I have never been able to see anything else.

To be precise, the Japanese believe that the rabbit is pounding rice to make mochi.

Here’s a sketch:

http://www.astroleague.org/al/obsclubs/lunar/lunar3.html

It’s a bit of a stretch to call that a face, if you ask me. It’s a good demonstration of how humans tend to see faces in any pattern. Like photos of Mars…