Larry Sessions

I guess that growing up in the South, I was a little sheltered. I had heard the term "mooning" somewhere, but had never experienced it. I thought that maybe it was some Northern invention, not a real phenomenon that real people experience or heavens forbid, actually do.

Well, more than 20 years ago in the Seychelles Islands I was mooned, sort of. Actually I just came across a particular kind of coconut, endemic to these islands. The coco-de-mer, viewed one way, looks remarkably like a human derriere. Viewed from another direction, it looks like… well, you figure that out. So I guess this wasn’t truly a case of being "mooned". Maybe, I thought, this “mooning” idea was all just a figment of someone’s imagination.

But five or six years ago (maybe longer), I learned that I was wrong. My wife and I took the kids, by then teenagers, to western Colorado to the beautiful little town of Durango for a long weekend and a chance to ride the famed Durango-Silverton narrow-guage railroad. Needless to say, the kids were not impressed. Surprise, surprise!

On the way back from Silverton, we crossed a mountaneous hillside liberally sprinkled with the kind of fabulous homes I will never be able to afford. I would love to live in this area, so I was keen (an archaic term meaning "intensely interested") to take a look. Just outside the city limits it happened. Two young men on the back deck of a multimillion dollar residence, and likely emboldened by some anti-inhibitory liquid. suddenly dropped drawers as the train passed and showed their second set of "cheeks." I’m old enough and "worldly" enough that it wasn’t all that shocking — just startling and unexpected. At least it  was a "proof of concept" experience and I now know that such odd behavior does indeed exist. And I am thankful that my wife and kids were looking the other way at the time! But as As Stephanie used to say on "Full House", how rude!

Next Saturday (5/19), Venus gets mooned, sort of. That’s what I say when the Moon passes by some object in the heavens. On Saturday afternoon and evening, the waxing crescent moon slips by the second planet, passing as close as 1.7 degrees at about 9 p.m. Eastern Time. This offers an excellent opportunity for anyone who has never done it to see Venus in broad daylight. In the western part of North America, the closest approach occurs before sunset, but even back East you can view the grouping in the late afternoon.

Just find the crescent moon in the afternoon sky, which in itself will take some doing, and then scan the sky around it for Venus. The moon is a half degree across, so limit your scan to about 3 or 4 moon diameters around the crescent. To make it easier, use a program like Starry Night (my favorite) to plot it and show you exactly where Venus is, relative to the moon, at any time. The image shown here is for Denver, looking about 50 degrees high, nearly due west, at 7 p.m. local time. The circle is the field of view of 7X50 binoculars. [By the way, Bruce McClure has written about the moon-Venus pairing in Tonight's Sky. And don't feel too bad if you miss it, as there will be another opportunity in June.]

So here’s your chance to experience a "mooning." It’s fun, educational, and not at all rude!