Shine on Harvest Moon

Wiki says- The Harvest Moon comes soon before or soon after the autumnal equinox. It is simply the full moon closest to that equinox. About once every four years it occurs in October (in the northern hemisphere), depending on the cycles of the moon. Currently, the latest the Harvest Moon can occur is on October 7.

In 2010, in the United States, the Harvest Moon happens in the early morning hours of Sept 23, only 5 1/2 hours after the autumnal equinox.

Often, the Harvest Moon seems to be bigger or brighter or more colorful than other full moons. The warm color of the moon shortly after it rises is caused by light from the moon passing through a greater amount of atmospheric particles than when the moon is overhead. The atmosphere scatters the bluish component of moonlight (which is really reflected white light from the sun), but allows the reddish component of the light to travel a straighter path to one's eyes. Hence all celestial bodies look reddish when they are low in the sky.

The apparent larger size is because the brain perceives a low-hanging moon to be larger than one that's high in the sky. This is known as a moon illusion and it can be seen with any full moon. It can also be seen with constellations; in other words, a constellation viewed low in the sky will appear bigger than when it is high in the sky.

All full moons rise around the time of sunset. However, although in general the moon rises about 50 minutes later each day, as it moves in orbit around Earth, the Harvest Moon and Hunter's Moon are special, because around the time of these half moons, the time difference between moonrise on successive evenings is shorter than usual which means that the moon rises approximately 30 minutes later, from one night to the next, as seen from about 40 degrees N. or S. latitude, for several evenings around the full Hunter's or Harvest Moons. 

Thus there is no long period of darkness between sunset and moonrise around the time following these full moons. In times past this feature of these autumn moons was said to help farmers working to bring in their crops (or, in the case of the Hunter's Moon, hunters tracking their prey). They could continue being productive by moonlight even after the sun had set. Hence the name Harvest Moon. 

The reason for the shorter-than-usual rising time between successive moonrises around the time of the Harvest and Hunter's Moon is that the ecliptic—the plane of Earth's orbit around the sun—makes a narrow angle with respect to the horizon in the evening in autumn.

Favorite Fortune Telling Machines

I have always loved the fortune telling machines in Musee Mecanique at San Francisco's Ocean Beach.

This one types out your fortune on a page to take with you.

Fortune Telling Machines

Remember these? Fortune telling machines with animatronic figures inside of mysterious Gypsies, Swamis, or Wizards? We know these purveyors of destiny are just robots, lifeless mannequins. . . aren't they? Why does it seem that they are smirking at you? Did those eyes just move? 

Disneyland's famous Esmeralda 

I have been having my fortune told by her for over 40 years!

What is your favorite Fortune Telling Machine story?

New Ghost Adventures!

Aawww yeah! Zak, Nick and Aaron are back with an all new episode tonight on the Travel Channel!
First show of the season: The GA Crew travels to Gettysburg, PA, site of the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. While there, they attempt to make contact with dead soldiers, the sadistic woman who ran the town's orphanage and the ghosts of children she abused.

Lasse Hoile

Have I already posted about this man's amazingly morbid photography? Seriously, even if I have, it bears repeating. 

See more of his stunningly haunting art HERE.

12 Coolest Steampunk Gadgets

Some of these are pretty cool..some are kind of meh... Check em out Here

Have You Been Flossing?

Check out THIS site for a proverbial ton of amazing photographs, taken within the ruins of abandoned dentists offices.

Here's a sample:

The Island of Schizophrenic Toys

For your gift giving consideration: Dub the severely depressed turtle? German toymaker Paraplush has designed a controversial new line of toys with an assortment of psychiatric disorders. The company advertises stuffed animals who suffer from a range of mental illnesses (bipolar disorder, depression, multiple personality disorder) and even come packaged with a personalized medical history and treatment plan.

"'Patients' from the Paraplush toy company include Dub the turtle with severe depression, Sly the snake who suffers from terrifying hallucinations, Dolly the sheep with a multiple personality disorder and a crocodile with an irrational fear of water." Each mentally ill Paraplush toy, designed by Martin Kittsteiner, retails for $38.

Read more HERE

Oddities in Medicine

Interested in arcane medical studies and anatomical anomalies? HERE is a blog you might enjoy!

Argyria

Beware your intake of colloidal silver. Once a common ingredient in nosedrops, colloidal silver has been largely discarded due to its disastrous cumulative effect. Large doses administered over a period of time can cause Argyria, an irreversible condition which turns the skin a dead gray. Sufferers resemble walking corpses.

Colloidal silver is still available, mostly as a disinfectant but also amazingly as a dietary supplement, despite the warnings of people such as Rosemary Jacobs, who was prescribed colloidal silver nosedrops at the age of 14 and who still suffers the consequences some 6 decades later.

Duffy's Cut~ Mass Grave Site

I have been following this story for a while, fascinating!

Grandfather's ghost story leads to mysterious mass grave By Meghan Rafferty, CNN Malvern, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- "This is a mass grave," Bill Watson said as he led the way through the thick Pennsylvania woods in a suburb about 30 miles from Philadelphia. "Duffy's Cut," as it's now called, is a short walk from a suburban cul-de-sac in Malvern, an affluent town off the fabled Main Line. Twin brothers Bill and Frank Watson believe 57 Irish immigrants met violent deaths there after a cholera epidemic struck in 1832. They suspect foul play. "This is a murder mystery from 178 years ago, and it's finally coming to the light of day," Frank Watson said. The brothers first heard about Duffy's Cut from their grandfather, a railroad worker, who told the ghost story to his family every Thanksgiving. According to local legend, memorialized in a file kept by the Pennsylvania Railroad, a man walking home from a tavern reported seeing blue and green ghosts dancing in the mist on a warm September night in 1909. "I saw with my own eyes, the ghosts of the Irishmen who died with the cholera a month ago, a-dancing around the big trench where they were buried; it's true, mister, it was awful," the documents quote the unnamed man as saying. "Why, they looked as if they were a kind of green and blue fire and they were a-hopping and bobbing on their graves... I had heard the Irishmen were haunting the place because they were buried without the benefit of clergy." When Frank inherited the file of his grandfather's old railroad papers, the brothers began to believe the ghost stories were real. They suspected that the files contained clues to the location of a mass grave. "One of the pieces of correspondence in this file told us 'X marks the spot,'" said Frank. He added that the document suggested that the men "were buried where they were making the fill, which is the original railroad bridge." In 2002, the brothers began digging and searching. They found forks and remnants of a shanty and, in 2005, what Bill Watson calls the "Holy Grail" -- a pipe with an Irish flag on it. They knew they were close, but Bill said they knew they needed "hard science" to get them to the next step. The science came from Tim Bechtel, a geophysicist, who learned about the project from a colleague at the University of Pennsylvania who had heard the Watson brothers speak. The friend knew Bechtel could provide the missing link in the brothers' excavation efforts. Bechtel's work included earth scans, which can help detect what's underground without digging or drilling. By shooting electrical current through the slope, Bechtel said he learned there were "oddball areas" or places where the current wouldn't pass through. "We saw areas in the slope that were very electrically resistant," Bechtel recalled. This was an initial indicator something might lie beneath the surface. After further digging, Bechtel and the Watsons detected "air bubbles above the coffins," he said. Bechtel helped pinpoint key areas to dig and on March 20, 2009, Bill Watson said the team made a startling discovery. "One of my students came running over at about 2 in the afternoon with something that was a clearly discernable human bone," Bechtel said. It was just the beginning of the many puzzle pieces to surface at Duffy's Cut. The pieces led them to suspect that something other than cholera was responsible for the deaths. You Can read the entire story HERE

The Dancing Skeleton - Lumiere

Playing Pinochle with the Worms

Found these exceptionally morbid playing cards over on Chintz Of Darkness, a fabulous blog devoted to all things Uber Chic Goth.