REVISITING THE MOON

THIS WEEK WAS THE 50th ANNIVERSARY of the first landing of mankind on the moon, on 20 July 1969. It was fun to be in Zermatt, where the sky reaches down to touch you on a clear day, to celebrate this awesome achievement. Plus the gods were kind enough to celebrate the event at the full-moon portion of the satellite's monthly cycle, shown starting on July 16 on the chart.

Moon chart from moonconnection.com

A comparative close-up through the camera showed a mass on the moon that corresponded to a labelled image of the moon, indicating the location of the Mare Tranquillitatis -- the Sea of Tranquility where astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin had landed. It spurred the imagination to the breaking point.

On Earth, the Alps form a bowl at the south end of the valley. The tall mountains at the eastern end -- the Dom and the Breithorn, not shown in the photo -- are on the left. The queen of all the Swiss Alps, the Matterhorn, rises majestically on the right (western) end of the vista. (Cervinia, Italy is over the horizon to the south.) When you're lucky (and we were this week), the clouds do not block the view of the moon, which takes several hours to cross the "ridge" of land visible from downtown Zermatt. So I parked myself on the balcony to watch the far-away moon move from east to west on this anniversary dawn.

It was an interesting interlude. The patch of sky before me was immense; the Matterhorn, not-exactly-shabby. In context, the moon seemed so far away, and myself, sitting on a small balcony in Zermatt, seemed -- in the scheme of things -- tiniest of all. The universe so vast. We humans so fragile. Quite a humbling experience.