Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin (1889–1977) is considered one of the first movie stars ever and made film history with his acting and his works. He is also one of the few artists who managed the transition from silent films to sound films.
Because of using archetypal imagery and symbols in his films, it is natural that the moon could also play a part somewhere. We found four references:
The Bible is undoubtedly one of the most important books in human history – most printed, most translated and worldwide the most widespread. It is the Holy Scripture of Christianity and Judaism (in different forms) and therefore the manifestation of God’s word in two of the major world religions.
The text contains, with its archaic, poetic language, many descriptions of nature and celestial events. So, it is obvious that the Sun, the Moon and the stars are mentioned. But is the full moon also to be found?
Māgha Pūjā is an important Buddhist holiday that is celebrated in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka, on the day of the full moon, in the third month of the Thai moon calendar, in February/March. The word Māgha refers to month and Pūjā is the honoring. Legend has it that on this day 1,250 monks congregated to meet with Buddha.
Everyone is familiar with the silhouette of the Stonehenge rocks in the southern English county of Wiltshire, one of the truly ancient structures of human kind that continues to fascinate because of its archaic construction and mystical presence. Maybe it reminds us people of our origin and of something we often tend to forget amid our hectic everyday world: simplicity.
At the same time, the building of Stonehenge has been everything but easy back then. The age of the grounds is estimated to be more than 5000 years. Experts assume, it took many millions of working hours to dress and transport the up to 50 tons heavy rocks by hand and to erect them in the well-known formation. In particular the lintels, on top of the upright stones, leave us in awe.
Today is the last day of 2012 and we asked ourselves when there has been or will be a full moon in the past or the future at the turn of the year. What a fascinating picture, if you are imagining also the full moon next to the firework welcoming the New Year. The spectacle of humans meets the eternal beauty of the universe …
When looking up to the full moon, you see a sphere and there is no doubt: the Moon has to be round. And we assume quite simply that a sphere is orbiting our Earth. This is correct indeed, if taking a lax approach in the definition of a sphere. The Moon is spherical, but differs considerably from the perfect shape. On the one hand it is flattened at the North Pole and South Pole, and on the other hand, its reverse side, which is turned away from the Earth, is convexed outwardly.
One obviously has the night sky before one’s eyes when thinking of the full moon. In reality, however, the event »full moon« has nothing to do with the fact whether it is night or day for us. The full moon occurs when Sun – Earth – Moon form a line in space and exactly in this order. The Earth lies in fact between the Sun and the Moon. Depending on what time this happens, it is night on the hemisphere that is turned away from the Sun and you can see the Moon in the sky. But on the hemisphere that is turned towards the sun it is daytime at this point and the full moon cannot be seen, because when observed from this position it is actually behind the Earth.
Luna 2 was a Soviet space probe that impacted the Moon on 13th/14th September 1959. Space probes are unmanned flying objects that are used for exploration. In this case, it was about exploring the Moon, with the goal to fly a human to the Moon and have them return safely. History shows that this did not become possible until ten years later, with the moon landing of Neil Armstrong within the framework of the Apollo 11 mission, in July 1969.
As a general rule, we live our secular life by a so-called solar calendar, the Gregorian calendar, which determines our calculation of time since the end of the 16th century. The biggest advantage of a solar calendar is its connection to the seasons: it is warm in summer, cold in winter, at least this is how it should be … at times however, as we all know, the weather goes crazy and sunshine is long-awaited in summer and snow stays away in winter. The seasons are connected to the (solar) calendar months.
“Moonwalker” is a musical film from 1988 starring Michael Jackson. The movie is a wild and trendy mixture of music videos, live concert recordings, action scenes, science fiction effects and cartoons – so less of a classical movie, but more so an anthology. The plot revolves around how Michael saves three children (i.e. played by Sean Lennon, John Lennon’s son) and the children of the world from the deadly intrigues of the villain Mr. Big (played by Joe Pesci).
We have been pondering about, whether a banknote does exist with a depiction of the Moon. Thanks to Google, we found something and discovered a variety of examples from different countries – with popular and less well known currencies. On the left you can see a detail of a Swiss 10 francs note, which depicts our solar system with several planets, amongst them also our Earth and its Moon.