Often, it is easy to ignore the world around us and take Earth for granted. Given this reality, for a normal person, what’s out there in space can be so fascinating and at the same time so disproportionate in terms of dimension that it takes one of the following categories: irrelevant against our daily and global struggles, or evocative, making us imagine and almost feel everything we could achieve and become.
Our only natural satellite, the Moon, probably falls in all of the above. In the same way that the first missions to put humans on its surface sparked curiosity and fascination, there have been some five/six decades during which our attention shifted to more urgent priorities. Interest in going to the Moon was dismissed because once the space race was won, there was no reason to keep going again. This past month, the Artemis II flight brought humans around the Moon. Besides allowing them to see the far side for the first time, it tested systems that could, maybe, one day make that reality that it’s envisioned by a few of setting up colonies on the surface of the Moon and beyond.
This past month, another rare episode happened in which we were awed by a blood supermoon. Even though it sounds off-topic, it is what initiated this blog post. Sorry to disappoint if you were looking for Antemis content.
Speaking of the Moon, since my year in Malaysia (2011-2012), when I had the opportunity to live with a Muslim family and learn about Islam, I’ve always paid attention to when Ramadan falls and have tried to get in touch with them. For some reason, I had always noticed that during Ramadan and the month after (Shawwal), the moon looked much larger and more yellowish or reddish. Somehow, I took for granted it had to do with the lunar calendar thing. On the other hand, I was always puzzled, but never enough to ask, if Ramadan drifts with the lunar calendar, why doesn’t the Chinese New Year also drift? I never gave it much more importance until now, when I decided to go down the rabbit hole of learning about how lunar calendars are determined across cultures.
The first thing to note is that besides the solar calendar, the one we are used to in the West, there are two more types of calendars: the pure lunar and the lunisolar calendar. The former counts one year as 12 29/30-day lunar months, totaling 354 days (11-12 days shorter than a solar year). This is the reason why Ramadan starts earlier each year. The latter, what we would think of when referring to the lunar calendar in the Chinese New Year, applies a correction by adding an extra month every three years, so that the drift is reset relative to the solar year.
If you know a bit about Islam, you’d know that there seem to be some clear written instructions on how to solve life situations (even if the timeframe in which they were written doesn’t necessarily adjust to the current reality). The Quran’s guidance offers pragmatic solutions. However, I was surprised to learn that the start of a new month isn’t determined by counting days but by observing the sky and spotting the lunar crescent, which also depends on the weather. Plus, the Quran seems to have taken it quite personally against those trying to account for leap years.
The mystery of the warmer color was a bit more difficult to solve. In the past 16 years, since I started paying attention to this, Ramadan has occurred during the months of Summer and Spring. Then, in the northern hemisphere, the Moon is visible at lower elevation angles – closer to the horizon, causing the light to traverse a longer path through the atmosphere, letting us perceive it as more red or yellow. As Ramadan keeps drifting towards Winter in the coming years, the Moon will continue to appear less yellow.
To avoid jumping into further conclusions, note that the end of Ramadan is marked by a waxing crescent, which appears as the moon is partially illuminated on the right in the Northern Hemisphere and on the left in the Southern Hemisphere. However, most countries with Muslim traditions that feature a crescent moon on their flags use the waning crescent (illuminated on the left in the Northern Hemisphere). So it has nothing to do with the end of the Holy month, but rather with the beginning of a new cycle, with a new Moon.
Our return to the Moon is inevitable. Let me say we, even though I’m really referring to a very small, select group of people—either those chosen for extraordinary scientific achievement, like the Artemis II crew, or those who possess an extraordinary amount of money. Sadly or not, those two forms of capital are increasingly comparable.
The more I think about it, the more I see the resemblance between the Moon and Antarctica: a place beyond everyday reach, yet accessible with enough (brute) force, influence, and money. The context of the Antarctic Treaty (signed in 1959, in the middle of the Cold War) is different from today—or maybe not so different after all; I often lose track of whether we are in, or merely entering WWIII. Still, I’d like to bring the treaty into the conversation. It essentially establishes Antarctica as a peaceful, demilitarized zone governed by the principle of freedom of scientific research.
Given recent news about Greenland and the explicit interests of those driving lunar and Martian exploration, it is difficult to imagine a similar agreement for the Moon. Besides the fact that there is a real economic and scientific interest on claming the Moon as someone’s own, we can argue that no living beings are harmed if things go wild on the lunar surface. Yet whatever happens in the next few years will set the precedent for how we approach space exploration—and for how scientific and political interests intertwine beyond Earth. So perhaps it concerns us more than we think.
There’s much more to unpack on how the Moon rules aspects we don’t think of in the very day, which can be more or less fundamental to the way of life depending on where we live. I remember living in the Canaries as a kid that the change in the shoreline (also controlled by the Moon) was so extreme that it could make the beach almost disappear, making us reconsider whether to go to the beach in the morning or in the afternoon. In the same way, after Artemis II’s success, the Moon will also guide humanity’s interest and keep us engaged in open discussions about who and how it should be colonized, what the next step for humanity is, and, of course, whether it all makes sense. Most importantly, every time I see a beautiful Moon, and I get the chance of seeing many, I’ll think of both my Malay family, who made me start paying attention to the Moon cycles more than fifteen years ago, and my beloved friends who currently work on reaching the Moon and going beyond its far side.
