Left to Right, Right? Nothing Left

It's almost Christmas, and I don't really want to tax my otherwise Christmas-consumed mind with anything actually significant.  My sons are in town and I want to focus on them as much as work will allow.  So this one is the most trivial pieces I may ever have written.

We live in the Northern Hemisphere, as the vast majority of people in the world do.  All of the USA is in the Northern Hemisphere, at least the 50 states and even the District of Columbia, which some people believe is on Mars, or at least is populated by people from there.

North of the equator, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.  It does so south of the equator, too, but it looks funny.  I think it probably does, anyway, because seeing the sun cross the north sky would disorient me.  Well, I've never been south of the equator and I don't know.  G'day, mate.

The moon also rises in the east and sets in the west, too, same as the sun, because the "rising" is the illusion of the earth's rotation.

All this astronomical chit-chat is by way of reminding ourselves that if we Americans are in America, looking at a time-lapse video of the motion of the sun and moon, no matter what time of the year it is taken, it is going to go from left to right, as long as we ourselves are upright.  Left to right.  In the summer, the arc from rise to set is bigger, because the sun appears highest in the sky at noon on the summer solstice, and has the lowest arc at the winter solstice, with its noon peak lowest in the sky at any time of the year.

Left to right.

OK, so I have now planted a thought in your head that I need you to take to your TV and movie watching.  I have long marveled at the fact that lots of shows include an obligatory scene of the sun or moon transiting part of the sky, a shot used to give the impression that time as passed (as an alternative to putting up a graphic reading "time has passed").

OK, it's not that I've marveled at the use of the time-lapse, so much as the fact that more than half the time, the sun or moon is somehow making its transit across the sky right-to-left, i.e., "backwards."  And no one seems to notice or care.

It is a joke in this house, by the way, a kind of dump-on-Bob thing because I am the type who would notice something like that, that defies physics but happens all the time on TV regardless.

But I noticed, which is why I'm writing this, and more to the point I noticed because so many different TV programs, with so many different topics, have so often had the sun or moon going right-to-left.  I don't get it.  There are only two ways to achieve that illusion -- one is to run the film backwards, and the other is to photograph the transit in a mirror.

B-b-but, neither of those makes any particular cinematographic sense; if the obvious purpose of the brief clip is to show time passing forward, and the outcome of the illusion shows the sun or moon -- and presumably time -- going backward, the director has obviously flunked basic astronomy.

And it happens so often!  I'm serious; it is at least half the time, it seems, that the rules of astronomy are suspended because of cinematic ignorance.

I don't know what to say, but I would appreciate it if you would start keeping a sharp eye out for this happening.  Next time you see one of those brief time-lapse videos, notice which way the sun or moon is moving.  And do write a comment below.  I don't know what will be the outcome, except that I will be happy it is not just I.

And I'll have a merry Christmas either way, and hope you do as well.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.