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Here's an easy one for you experiened and knowledgable guys and gals!?!
Looking out the back balcony this last week and I get to enjoy a fullish moon rise from the eastern sky - what a sight. From one night to the next, I look at IceInSpace to find out when it's going to happen each night. Since I've been doing that, I've noticed something I've never noticed before . . .
The moon doesn't cut the horizon at near the same place from one night to the next!? Earlier this week I took note of where it rose from the horizon (buildings for me); and the next night it rose from a different place. If I placed my hand outwards towards the horizon, with palm facing outwards, there was a width of four fingers between where it rose one night and where it rose to the next!!
I'd always thought that the moon and the planets were on the same plane, (except Neptune?) and that the Moon would behave like the sun does; that is, over the space of a year the arc of the sun would oscillate between 12.5 deg either side of the equator, and hence, from Sydney, it would rise from near the same place each day.
Does the sun do this too? Or is it only the moon? To paraphrase an old bloke on TV, "Why is it so?" Is it an elliptical orbit, or some other reason?
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