Moon missed and plane hit

Tomorrow morning’s dawn scene.

See the end note about enlarging illustrations.

I was out on my Dawn Point this morning, the Sun (and Saturn) about to rise over the Isle of Portland in the east.  I looked around as usual at the state of the whole sky: mostly clear, but a large lamp behind me, burning through some inland cloud: the Moon, going down in the west.

We had glimpsed it Full two evenings before, from high ground as we returned from a necessary trip to London.  I realized I had forgotten about the lunar eclipse of that night.  Well, I wouldn’t have had time to prepare anything.  It was a penumbral eclipse, probably not noticeable unless you were alerted to it.  I’ll make up for it by devising some new kind of illustration for lunar ecliposes, though the next one, June 5, will be even more marginally penumbral, and in view over the Indian Ocean..  I do apologise for forgetting.  A penumbral mistake compared with the total mistake for which Iran has just apologized.

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Home planet department:

This seems probable.  Trump’s drone assassination of the Iranian general caused a wave of nationalism that drowned out the protest movement against Iran’s theocratic regime.  Both sides, U.S. and Iran, were shrilly threatening each other.  Someone in the Revolutionary Guard base near Tehran spotted an airplane; “By God, they’re already about to nuke us”; had ten seconds to decide; launched the missile to bring it down.  No one, high or low, would have ordered the destruction of an Ukrainian passenger plane.  On it were Iranians as well as Canadians. After three days of denial, Iran’s top level admitted the mistake.  The Iranian protest movement is re-ignited.  Trump would do well to keep out of it and let it appear as popular, not American-prompted.  Someone in Iran, more probably low than high, will be the scapegoat.

Best would be for Trump, too, to admit a mistake and for the nuclear deal to be reinstated, so that Iran is not crippled economically and does not develop a nuclear weapon.

During the days of escalation, my anxiety was for the westerners hoping to be released from Iranian jails – such as Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe – and the thousands of Americans and others – such as medics and aid workers – who are in Muslim countries and at the mercy of mobs or lone fanatics.  Ground-to-air missiles cannot shoot down hate.

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ILLUSTRATIONS in these posts are made with precision but have to be inserted in another format.  You may be able to enlarge them on your monitor.  One way: right-click, and choose “View image”, then enlarge.  Or choose “Copy image”, then put it on your desktop, then open it.  On an iPad or phone, use the finger gesture that enlarges (spreading with two fingers, or tapping and dragging with three fingers).  Other methods have been suggested, such as dragging the image to the desktop and opening it in other ways.

Sometimes I make improvements or corrections to a post after positing it.  If you click on the title, rather than on ‘Read more;, I think you are sure to see the latest version.

This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.