From: Alex Ferguson (alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk)
Date: Sun 07 Jan 1996 - 19:49:00 EET
I don't think there should be much controversy about which direction
the Red Moon "revolves" in, if it does so at all; the appearance of
the moon runes in _Dragon Pass_, not to mention earthly precedent,
make it clear it should be "clockwise". Nick fiat need not enter
into play.
Assuming, for the sake of simplicity, the moon is exactly full at
midnight, then the Half days are very markedly gibbous, while the
Crescents are nearer to being half-full, and the Black and Dying
days are noticable crescents.
A possible, partial explanation for the above is that the moon might
actually be more than half-dark (picture a large, circular "red spot"
covering most, but not all of one face. If the moon revolved at a
non-constant rate, it might give that sort of timing of the half-moons
in Dragon Pass, but would cause Weird behaviour elsewhere. I suspect
numerous people will now trot out "It's magic, you fool!" arguments,
which rather seems to defeat the purpose of supposing a physical basis
for the phases in the first place, to my mind.
Alex.
------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Fri 13 Jun 2003 - 16:28:44 EEST