On a full moon night, when the moon rises above the horizon, I think you will notice that the moon is larger than usual. Astronomers in ancient times noticed the large size of the moon appearing near the horizon.
Astronomers in ancient Kathe have tried to solve why the moon appears larger near the horizon. But so far, they have not been able to answer why this happened.
Is the moon really that big near the horizon?
Here, we will first need to confirm whether the moon near the horizon is really large or not. The Moon’s distance from Earth is not always consistent. This happens because the moon’s orbit is not exactly circular but rather long and oval. That’s why the moon seen when it is close to the earth is large in vision, and the moon seen when it is far from the earth is small.
This is the actual measurement due to the distance between the moon and the earth on that day. But the distance between the Earth and the Moon does not change rapidly in a matter of hours. Therefore, the distance at the beginning of the moon’s rise in one night and the distance at the time when the moon reaches the head are the same.
Previously, it was thought that light from the moon was refracted when it entered the Earth’s atmosphere, making it appear larger. But when you carefully measure it, you will see that the age of the moon seen from the Earth does not change overnight.
This means that the actual size of the large moon seen above the horizon at sunrise is the same size as the moon seen overhead at night. In other words, the moon that appears to be large is not really large but only appears to be large due to the illusion of light.
This is called the Moon Illusion in science. But until now, scholars have not been able to provide a satisfactory answer as to why this happens.
Deception
A satisfactory answer has yet to be given, but one possible reason has been suggested by psychologists who study visual illusions. According to physical measurements and the pictures taken and compared, the size of the moon is not really much bigger when it is near the horizon. So, this process is just an optical illusion, as psychologists explain.
The idea accepted by most scholars is that when the moon is close to the ground, the brain of the person who sees the objects on the ground is larger than its original size.
When the moon is high in the sky, there isn’t much to compare it to except the stars around it. All around him was a vast expanse of dark space. Seeing this, his brain saw the moon as small in the vast expanse of space.
When it was close to the ground, buildings on the ground, trees, I compared forests and the moon. Compared to the detailed appearance of these objects, the moon appears to be larger than it originally was.
You can see this in the picture below. In this picture, the two circles in the middle are the same size. But the circle on the right, which is between the larger circles, seems smaller, and the circle on the lower left, which is between the smaller circles, seems bigger. But if you measure really carefully, you will see that the size of these two circles is the same.
This is why the moon, which is close to the horizon and close to the topography for detailed comparison, is seen as larger than the moon surrounded by the sky high in the sky.
Not all scholars agree with this explanation. But at present, we cannot give a more concrete explanation than this, so the explanation is considered the best. In summary, the puzzle of why the moon appears larger near the horizon has not yet been satisfactorily answered.
