As map gurus, we love this kind of stuff. Today, June 20th 2016, the rare event of a full moon on the summer solstice will occur. Everywhere is somewhere, and the earth, sun and moon take this alignment only every 19 years. Every cartographer has a deep appreciation for the science of mapping the movements of celestial bodies.
If I didn’t own a custom map company, maybe I would have mapped the sky. A fantasy would to have been an astronaut, but the NASA of today is not the NASA of the 1980s. Creating custom maps, we artfully and logically represent static three-dimensional space—imagine that the roads and towns moved on their own paths and orbits.
Our logo, her name is Hannah, seems to perfectly fit this post. You’ll notice her hand hovers over a full moon: Creative Force Maps logo. Everyone on our Creative Force team has an appetite for the spatial sciences—on nights like tonight.
My husband wins on the summer solstice, and I lose. He loves cool nights and believes it is not possible to eat dinner with the sun still out. I love long sunny days, a throwback to playing outside as a kid in Minnesota. Starting tomorrow, each day is shorter, until I win again in December. We really do commemorate the Summer and Winter solstices every year.
If you have Google Earth installed, you can fully traverse the entire moon: even the far side of the moon! You’ll also find narration by Apollo astronauts as they give you tours of landing sites, and you can even zoom in to see footprints. Just click on the moon option.
If you don’t have Google Earth—and you really should—here is a link download the software and bring you immediately to the moon: https://www.google.com/earth/explore/showcase/moon.html. Google Earth is by my estimation of one of the most valuable free resources on the Internet. If you have kids or grand kids, expose them to it early—who knows what they may find inside themselves, or without.
So, as I promised, I’ve delivered Google Earth, a full moon, and the summer solstice. Closing words of cartographic wisdom: always know where you are, until you decide that you don’t.