2012 Supermoon

        Photographers took spectacular shots of this year's "supermoon", the visual spectacle that occurs once a year when the full moon is closest to the Earth. Pictures showed the giant moon dwarfing observers and looming over hillsides as if it was approaching the Earth in a science-fiction scenario.
        今年最為壯觀的“超級月亮”，每年發生一次，一般發生在月球距離地球最近的滿月時候。

        It's beautiful that we can still get excited by looking at the moon. It was there before humans were and has been observed and portrayed for thousands of years. It was by looking ever more closely at the moon that people realised what it actually is. Art and science meet in early astronomy.
        現在我們可以比以往更近的觀察月亮，人們意識到真正現實的存在，藝術和科學在這個天文現象中交匯。

        In the middle ages, the sky was understood to be a celestial canopy above the fixed Earth, and the sun and moon were imagined as moving in the heavens over our stationary platform. This world view is sweetly represented in Raphael's painting the Mond Crucifixion, which literally shows the sun and moon as personified luminous beings in the sky above the Earth. It is a lovely childlike image of the cosmos. Yet a few years after Raphael painted his flat Earth, the theorist Copernicus would think beyond such ancient models. Copernicus in the early 16th century postulated that the Earth orbits the sun and not the other way round. His theory was abstract. To prove it would need visual evidence.
        在中世紀，人們認為天空是地球的天蓬，太陽和月亮是在天堂中圍繞我們靜止的地面運動。這種世界觀在拉斐爾的名畫《被釘在十字架的嫉妒》上表現的惟妙惟肖，太陽和月亮被擬人化，在地球的上空發出光芒，這是人類對宇宙早期的認識。拉斐爾完成這部畫作幾年之後，哥白尼的理論超越了前輩們的宇宙模型。在16世紀早期，哥白尼就提出假設，地球是圍繞太陽旋轉的而不是其他的運動軌跡。他的理論很簡單，要想證明它需要視覺上的證據。

        In the early 17th century, the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei got his hands on one of the first telescopes and improved this Dutch invention. He turned it on the moon and made, for the first time, detailed observations of the surface of Earth's nearest neighbour. As he points out in his book The Starry Messenger, the moon is covered with mountains and craters and what look like seas. In other words, it is not a light in the sky but a rocky body like our own planet. This was a fundamental piece of evidence pointing to the nature of the Earth itself, as one sphere in space among others. It helped Galileo defend the new cosmos of Copernicus – and to get his point across, he used art. Galileo recorded his observations of the moon's surface in beguiling drawings that were engraved and printed in The Starry Messenger.
        伽利略在著作《星空使者》裡描述月球表面佈滿了山脈、坑和像海的東西。總之，月球並不是天空中的發光物體，而是一顆和我們星球類似的岩石星球。這是關於地球本質最基本的證據，地球只是太空中眾多星球的一員。這使得伽利略能夠為哥白尼的理論辯護。

        In centuries to come, telescopes improved and ever more accurate pictures of the moon were recorded. In the 1790s, John Russell made a drawing of the surface of the moon that is so precise and detailed it looks like a photograph taken by a spacecraft approaching Earth's satellite. This amazing piece of astronomical art comes from the era of the Enlightenment when people marvelled at science, as shown in Wright of Derby's painting The Orrery. The model of the solar system, which Wright portrays people reacting to with such curiosity and awe, is a modern view in which Copernicus and Galileo are vindicated.
        18世紀90年代， John Russell 繪製了一幅月球表面的圖，精確度可以和現代的地球衛星所拍攝的照片相媲美。這張令人驚歎的畫作創作於啟蒙時期，像 Wright of Derby 的畫作《The Orrery》中描繪的那樣，當時人們對科學有著非常高的熱情。繪畫中描繪的人們正在演示太陽系的模型顯得很好奇，這正是哥白尼和伽利略極力維護的。

        But the thing is – when you look at this year's supermoon, it is quite easy to see geographical features of the moon with the naked eye. Since these features can be seen without a telescope, why did it take a telescope to point them out? How could the moon be imagined as an ethereal light when its physical qualities are visible to the eye? That must be because you have to know what to look for in order to see it. The evidence of eye alone is not enough.
        月球表面的特徵很明顯是情況下，人們怎麼還會認為它的發光物體呢？你必須知道要尋找什麼，才能看見它。僅僅憑肉眼觀察到的是不夠的。