"Hagar" wrote in message
...

"Odysseus" wrote in message
news
In article ,
"Hagar" wrote:

[...] riding to work on Friday morning I saw the Moon setting in the
west,
about 6:30am and it was quite a sight; it appeared three times its
normal
size and had a dark-reddish tint, almost as one would expect Mars to
appear,
at close range. I am sure the amplification effect was caused by
atmospheric
lensing.

If by "amplification" you mean its great apparent size, that's not due
to the atmosphere, but to a well-known perceptual illusion. Images of
an
object near the horizon actually get compressed by atmospheric
refraction, quite the opposite of what our visual sense tells us.

--
Odysseus

OK, one more time: The ****ing Moon looked 2.5 times its normal size.
It was also bathed in a burnt orange like color. No, it is not an
illusion, because I have watched the Sun set in the Pacific ocean,
displaying identical traits. The additional "ether" one has to look
through when eyeing a visual path parallel to the Earth's surface must
act like a lens, making the Sun and the Moon appear larger, as they
approach the horizon.
Actually, the optical effects, make it look slightly smaller!....
However the way our 'brains' work, make it look a lot larger.
The only way to really get an idea of the size of the Moon at any time,
when just looking at it, is to 'override' the effect, hold your arm out,
and compare the actual size with (say) the size of the end of your thumb
at arms length. This gives you a reasonably 'constant' reference, and you
may well be suprised at what you find!...

So, you can either explain in detail the mystery of your "well-known
perceptual illusion", or shut up, because it sounds like gibberish to
me.
The illusion, is because there is a system in our visual processing, which
stops people/houses etc., from looking as small as they really are, when a
long way away. Effectively the visual processing in your head, says 'this
is a long way away, make it look bigger'. It tends only to come into
force, when something is low enough in the sky, that your brain starts
thinking 'this is near the horizon'.

Best Wishes