Tuesday, April 5, 2022

Seeking help from lunar scientists

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.


I’ve done some basic searches online, and while there are tons of videos showing libration from Earth, I’ve yet to find one from the moon’s surface.  I’m sure someone has simulated this, I just don’t know where to look.  So if you can answers these questions for me, or point me to somewhere I can get the answers, I’d really appreciate it.

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