Waxing Gibbous

 

I stepped outside on Halloween to see just what you'd expect on this holiday: a spooky Halloween Moon. Unfortunately, it wasn't a Full Moon, it was a Waxing Gibbous. But the way the clouds were situated around it, with bright light shining through only made me think of ghouls and goblins galore.

I did some quick measurements: it was 30° above the horizon at 170° S. I noticed that it seemed a bit smaller than normal, and I wondered why it had finally come back up from beneath the horizon as it had been in previous nights.

Happy Halloween

Search up "astronaut costume" on Pinterest and you'll find adorable kids smiling and posing as Neil Armstrong, and DIY projects that require high dedication to complete by October 31st. But this year, the three NASA astronauts (not the ones who rang your doorbell last night) and the other three members of the ISS crew dressed up for the spooky occasion.

They showed the world on Twitter how they celebrate in zero gravity with this photo and video: https://twitter.com/Space_Station/status/925438767162384384

My personal favorite is the Minion shirt donned by Space Station Commander, Randy Bresnik. Which costume do you like best? Let me know in the comments!

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On October 26, NASA released their "Spooky Space 'Sounds'" playlist of noises such as the sci-fi Whistler Waves and Saturn's unworldly Radio Emissions, even the faint church bells of Liquid Helium. These tracks sound just like those in sci-fi films -- I wonder if the producers had access to some of these sounds in the creation of such films or if they just guessed right?! Next Halloween I won't be playing those CDs of your typical spooky Halloween sound effects, I'll be playing NASA's space sounds -- just as spooky, maybe even more so, because they tell a real story: that of the universe.

Listen to the sounds and read more from NASA here: https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/features/halloween_sounds.html