60 points

There’s only a couple theories as to why we perceive the moon’s size differently and the best one is context/contrast with the moon’s surroundings in our visual field. Pretty sure there’s a wiki article about it. Not settled science yet either. Remember going down a rabbit hole about that a couple years ago. Neat stuff.

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24 points

Brains and eyes are weird man

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6 points

yea the moon does look bigger when near horizon stuff but still the moon is much bigger through human eyes way up high too. i think we have tunnel vision and cameras DGAF.

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1 point
*

Nvm, I read that wrong, sorry.

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56 points

In GTA Vice City, the moon changes size if you shoot it with a sniper rifle.

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24 points

Just as in real life.

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61 points

the reason for this is kinda funny

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9 points

Some say those artists are still bickering about it to this day

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3 points

I read somewhere that it’s because human eyes focus on something that is the size of your thumbnail at an arm’s length, so pretty small, and that distorts things a little bit so that what we’re focusing on appears larger. Whereas cameras take in the entire field of view as their focus (at least phone cameras, lenses are a whole other ballgame), and all of that data being poured in at once means the distortion isn’t there.

But that could be complete bull. I just read it somewhere on the Internet and it made sense lol.

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4 points

When you look at the moon, your field of vision is the sky and its surroundings.

When you look at a picture of the moon, your field of vision is the picture of the sky and its surroundings, and the surroundings of the picture.

Basically you’d have to have your face close enough to the picture where you’d see ONLY the picture, for the moon to look as impressive as IRL (and I daresay it’d be out of focus).

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10 points

It’s an illusion. Extend your arm to its full length, and stick out your thumb. Compare the size when the full moon is near the horizon, vs when it’s closer to zenith near midnight. It’ll be the same relative size.

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4 points

Also works for nukes

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13 points

Best explanation I’ve seen is that humans judge distance and size assuming a relatively flat surface (a dozen miles or so in any direction is fairly flat even though the Earth is round).

Things far along the horizon tend to be small because they’re far away. This isn’t the case for the Moon. So our brains assume it’s far away, but it’s the same apparent size, ergo, it must be massive.

Like we know Mt Rainier is massive and far away, so given this photo, we might assume the moon is massive.

Higher in the sky, there’s no real point of reference. Also, you might visually process the sky as a flat layer above the ground, so the same parallax trick applies. I.e. the sky above you is closer than the sky/ground at the horizon. Therefore Moon is “closer” and appears smaller.

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7 points

Proof that the earth is flat.

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1 point

Where’s the /s

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4 points

Weird that it’s almost obligatory on lemmy, which is supposed to be chiller than reddit.

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5 points

Not in my experience, haha. Love you guys though!

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8 points

Too many actual idiots in the world

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6 points

This website can be way more toxic than Reddit ever was. Especially when it comes to people who don’t get jokes.

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22 points

It fell off the edge

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1 point

Looks better in OLED.

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26 points

Too crisp. Should be a blurry dot.

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18 points

If you’re from the US, the moon is the size of a dime when viewed from 6 feet away. I don’t know what a universal measurement would be for folks outside the US.

Anyway, it always cracks me up when people get hyped for a “super moon”. This tiny object in the sky is going to be indistinguishably less tiny!

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55 points

I’m from the US and I’ve been watching For All Mankind lately so I feel like a bit of a moon expert. I’m pretty confident that if I viewed the moon from 6’ away, it’ll look larger than a dime. But I could be wrong.

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11 points

What about if it’s viewed from 238 thousand miles away?

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4 points

You would need a pretty good telescope to see a dime from 238 thousand miles away.

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That’s why I use a microscope, since it’s so small.

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4 points

My cousin continues to share every single super moon hype post, and somehow (after several years) he still hasn’t noticed or acknowledged that it never amounts to anything of note.

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3 points

My mom does the same thing. “Make sure you go look at the moon tonight. It’s a super blue blood harvest moon that won’t happen again in a million years.”

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Microblog Memes

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