When the Sun goes down, the Moon appears up. At least it regularly does. But what it stays like that for days?
Something quite so strange transpired one night in May 1110, the moon appeared to disappear. The Anglo-Saxon Peterborough Chronicle recorded,
“On the fifth night in the month of May appeared the moon shining bright in the evening, and afterwards by little and little its light diminished, so that, as soon as night came, it was so completely extinguished withal, that neither light, nor orb, nor anything at all of it was seen”.
Even with the moon’s disappearance, the stars blazed brightly, so the skies were certainly clear of clouds that night.
Clouds weren't the problem; if they were, the scribe wouldn’t go in detail to how bright and twinkling the stars seemed while the moon faded from view. Nor was the moon being eclipsed by Earth's shadow; if it was, the skywatcher would have seen the orb become a coppery "blood moon," not an eerie blank spot in the sky.
When the sun goes down, the Moon appears up. At least it regularly does. Until science unveiled the Earth’s rotation, many ancient mythologies often described this rare occurrence as some kind of solar chariot crossing the sky from dawn to twilight, with a lunar chariot taking off when it went into darkness. Something that is just this expected regularly goes by secret until it doesn’t happen. The scarcity of the moon that night was terrifying, and apparently triggered everything from unfortunate weather to starvation across the planet. Now scientists reasonably understand why, volcanoes.
This remarkably exceptional phenomenon has occurred in severe teamwork from scientists in an effort to find a purpose. The team went through historical archives, counted tree rings and more.
A new study by researchers at the University of Geneva in Switzerland believes it's a combination of volcanic ash and sulfur as well as colder weather that led to the Moon disappearing from sight.
Their findings were published in Nature Scientific Reports.
The researchers imply that a “‘forgotten’ cluster of volcanic eruptions” from 1108 to 1110, probably from Japan’s destructive Mount Asama, dumped a “dust veil” over Europe, which created the shadowy eclipse.
The crew searched over 130 sources from the 12th century for reports of the event, from England to France all the way to Japan. One of the longest and most detailed records comes from the Anglo-Saxon Peterborough Chronicle. It recalls,
“the moon shining bright in the evening, and afterwards by little and little its light diminished, so that, as soon as night came, it was so completely extinguished withal, that neither light, nor orb, nor anything at all of it was seen. And so it continued nearly until day, and then appeared shining full and bright.”
Now, here’s what’s really clever, and makes this report even more fascinating. The rings of the trees in England symbolised that the year 1109 was cold and rainy, (the year before the moon’s disappearance). This rain and coolness can be an outcome effect of global volcanos releasing dust and ash into the sky. If volcano eruptions cause lunar eclipses, and the ring trees suggested a recent eruption in 1109, it might just be case closed for that puzzling night in English, 1110.
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