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Wargasm ago

This is so stupid.

The telescope is earth-based--meaning that light reflected from the moon has to pass through earth's atmosphere. What you are seeing are density differences in earth's atmosphere that you can only notice because they're passing in front of the light from the moon. You know when the weather man on TV talks about a "cold front"? Same kind of thing. In fact, I bet you've seen this before and didn't realize what you were looking at: It's the exact same kind of phenomena that occurs on heated pavement only higher up and on a larger scale.

englishwebster ago

in a straight line?

Wargasm ago

I'm trying to think of a good way to explain it, but yeah.

When you open your fridge you won't notice the light bend because there's not enough air between your eye and the food in your fridge even though the light is diffracting a little bit.

When you have miles and miles of something diffracting a little bit you notice the diffraction.

Also when you are miles and miles away from something, little deviations in horizontal position aren't noticible--think of looking at a mountain while driving and how it looks like the mountain is staying still even though you know that you are moving.

Finally, you know from personal experience that pockets of different temperature air don't immediately diffuse and average out, if you've ever opened your front door in the winter or have used an oven.

Combine these three things and you get what appears to be a straight line.

un1ty ago

How long does light take to reach us being reflected off the moon?

Wargasm ago

That would be approximately (distance to the moon) /c.

So about (380E6 m)/(3E8 m/s) is 1.3 seconds.