Friday, January 05, 2018

Moonlight in Socorro, April 24, 1964


Yes, this is something of an exercise in futility... Since the question came up about the available moonlight on the Socorro landing site on April 24, 1964, I thought, for fun, I'd see if I could find the data. Took about five minutes, but for those of you interested in such things, here it is.


Sun and Moon Data for One Day
U.S. Naval Observatory
Astronomical Applications Department
Socorro, Socorro County, NM (Longitude W106° 53', Latitude N34° 3')
Friday, April 24, 1964
Mountain Standard Time                        

Sun
Begin civil twilight
  4:59 a.m.                                      
Sunrise
5:26 a.m.                                    
Sun transit
12:06 p.m.                                      
Sunset
6:46 p.m.                                    
End civil twilight
7:12 p.m.                                     
Moon
Moonset
4:40 a.m.                                      
Moonrise
5:03 p.m.                                      
Moon transit
11:09 p.m.                                       
Moonset
5:09 a.m. on following day                                  
Closest Primary Moon Phase: Full Moon on April 26, 1964 at 10:49 a.m. (local standard time)

Phase of the Moon on April 24, 1964: Waxing Gibbous with 96% of the Moon's visible disk illuminated.

1 comment:

  1. Kevin,
    I was recently watching one of defense journalist Nick Cook's documentary on UFOs, which included a look at the Socorro case. During the video reconstruction of the event, they showed a CGI rendering of a classic Flying Saucer which of course, is totally at odds with what Zamora saw, which I believe was an oval shaped white object. Cook then shows design schematics of Project Silverbug. With Cook being a defense journalist for several publications, I expected him to be very much on the side of UFOs being nothing but highly unusual experimental craft belonging to the US government, yet I was very confused as to why this giant leap was being made to tie Socorro to a classic saucer shaped object. If nothing else it is very poor journalism by someone like Nick Cook who as far as I know, is quite respected in his own field.

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