moon – Chad Comello

Moon moon moon, shining bright

I was playing soccer on the front lawn this evening with Mr. Two Years Old when the moon, waxing crescent, caught his curious eye in the encroaching darkness.

I asked him if he knew why the moon glowed. We’ve read books about it before, but he said he didn’t. I explained in the simplest language how it was sunlight he was seeing, and that it only hit part of the moon because it was round, like a ball.

After my brief lecture, he grabbed the ball and brought it next to one of the solar-powered lawn lights that illuminates our front walkway. “I want to make the soccer ball glow,” he said.

It was an excellent opportunity for an object lesson. We looked at how the ball was lit up only on one side, where the light was coming from.

I managed to photograph the view before he kicked the ball away for more scrimmaging:

I never know how much of what I explain actually makes sense to him or sticks in his mind. But I should know by now never to underestimate his intelligence and curiosity, because two year olds are made to be learners.

November 9, 2021 1 Comment

Recent Views

More photography here.

Flying above Idaho, returning from Portland. I usually don’t take pictures from airplanes, but I’m a sucker for mountains, especially ones as pretty as these. They sparkled:

Chicago at sunset, as lonesome and resolute as the celestial orb overlooking it:

William Fitzsimmons concert. I liked the natural quadrants that formed outward from the violinist, and the colors exaggerating those divisions:

May 6, 2016 Add Comment

How to Feel Small

I like things that make me feel small.

Like If The Moon Were Only 1 Pixel, a “tediously accurate scale model of the solar system” that, as you scroll horizontally, reveals the vast span of our neighborhood:

Or Why Time Flies, a philosophical exploration of our fungible awareness of time:

Or The Scale of the Universe (my favorite), which, as you zoom in and out, shows the comparative sizes of all creation, from the largest supercluster to the smallest neutrino (notice how everything at some point is the same size):

Or Lightyear.fm, a “journey through space, time & music” that plays songs of the past according to how far their waves have traveled from Earth since they were released:

Or The Deep Sea, made by Neal Agarwal, which shows as you scroll down the creatures (and shipwrecks) that live at different depths of the ocean. Spoiler alert: the ocean is very deep.

August 7, 2015 Add Comment