24 hour moon

A 24 hour moon (also called a continuous polar moon) is the lunar cousin of the midnight sun: at high latitude, when the Moon's declination allows it, the Moon can stay above the horizon for about half a lunar month — roughly fourteen days — while its phase changes and it circles the sky. At the geographic South Pole that means one long, unbroken stretch of moon visibility rather than a daily rise and set.

The Final Experiment later filmed the better-known 24-hour Antarctic sun. This page is about an earlier polar-sky record: a 2016 South Pole moon timelapse, not TFE footage.

Robert Schwarz, South Pole 2016

In March–April 2016, photographer Robert Schwarz recorded a fourteen-day moon timelapse at Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station (the geographic South Pole). He published the result on Vimeo as changing phase - the moon over the South Pole on 14 April 2016.

His field blog tracks the same run:

• 2016-03-09 — project starting around sunset: a two-week moon phase-change timelapse, with an Arduino stepper planned for the mount.
• 2016-03-28 — sun gone; refraction still seen the night before.
• 2016-04-14 — full write-up of the completed fourteen-day run (same substance as the Vimeo description) — upload day.
• Moonrise and moonset calendar for South Pole, March 2016 (timeanddate.com)

Exact calendar start and end days for every frame are not stated more precisely than those blog markers plus the 14 April upload. The recording window is roughly late March into early April 2016: about fourteen consecutive days starting around sunset / after the sun had dropped.

Setup, from his own description of the completed run:

• Arduino stepper on an old tracking mount
• Continuous operation around −60 °C; heated camera and lens; vacuum-oven dried gear
• 70 mm lens (~22.5° horizontal FOV); Moon's maximum elevation about 18.5°; highest moon cut off in frame
• Weather imperfect; mount stuck on cables twice and needed a daily rewind
• Phase changes while the Moon circles the horizon relative to the Sun; Moon is about fourteen days above (and below) the horizon at the Pole

Primary sources: the Vimeo upload and the South Pole 2016 blog.

Why it matters

Continuous polar moon visibility is expected on a globe at high latitude when the Moon's declination puts it in the sky for that long. It is the lunar version of the midnight sun, not a mystery. Some flat-earthers treat a "24-hour moon" as a globe-killer (see e.g. mentions on ShandTV); a South Pole timelapse of the Moon changing phase while it stays up for half a month is what the globe already predicts.

See also

• The Final Experiment
• Antarctica video compilation
• ShandTV