I am, ever so slowly, working on a story set on the moon a hundredish years from now. It is a time when lunar tourism is thriving and there are museums and other attractions on the moon. I have the idea for one museum, but I’d like to put it in a specific location on the moon, but I’m not sure where such a location is, or if it even exists.
I
know there is this thing called libration which – oversimplified – results from
the moon’s orbit not being a perfect circle which allows us to see more of the
moon than you’d think. One side of the
moon is always facing Earth, but with libration we can peek over the edges and
over time we can actually see 59% of the moon’s surface from the Earth.
Which
means, that there are spots on the moon’s surface where you would see Earth
rise up, then sink back down below the horizon.
My questions are: how long would that take, does the Earth get high
enough to clear the horizon, would it be straight up and down or curved, and
where could you see this? The ideal spot
for this museum would be a spot where Earth would only be visible half the
time. The ultimate ideal spot would be
where Earth would only be visible for half the time and it would just get above
the horizon. But that would be too cool,
so it probably doesn’t exist.
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