[HPforGrownups] Full moon question for the folklorists

[Silverthorne]

No: HPFGUIDX 97506

I can think of a few possible reasons.

The one I would personally favour is the idea that the moonlight is
'drowned out' by the 'sunlight'. If the sun is visible, it will
always be the dominant lightsource in the sky.

<<Silverthorne *snip*>>

What this means is that *if* the sun is in the sky, it's light will
always be at least 100,000 times brighter than the light of the
full moon

<<*Lots of snipping on interesting scientific stats--wow, let me guess,
you're an astronomer or at least require a knowledge of it in your line of
work...;)**>>

So, if I had to come up with an explanation, I'd start by looking
at the dominance of different light sources. During daylight, the
light of the sun simply washes out the light of the moon, to an
extent it can't have a lycanthropic effect.

{Silverthorne}
That makes perfectly good sense--from a scientific point of view. The lore
though is based on superstition, not scientific facts, and started way back
when the common element did not have such information--so it still boggles
the mind a little when you look at it from the average person's POV (The
folks back then would have no real way of knowing that the daylight moon
gives off so little light in comparison to the sun--after all, they can see
it, can't they? Likewise with stars and planets at night--I suspect their
idea of how much light was being given off was related more to the assumed
'size' of the object as opposed to a measure of how much light from it
actaully reached the Earth...). I suppose since I'm looking at it from their
POV (and a supernatural one as well), it becomes a sticking point for me
(and I also like to play with ideas like this anyway--keeps my mind from
totally freezing in my old age...). Unlike us, they didn't have all this
nifty scientific fact--all they had were their eyes, their mind, and
whatever the local religion was telling them that week about the dark and
nasty things out there (most of which, including werewolves, ran about at
night, because night is when bad things ran about...nothing scientific
there--just good old human fear of the dark, so to speak...^^;)

{Shaun}
Just for the record - while technically speaking full moon is an
instant, most astronomers generally consider it to be about 3 days
- one night either side of the actual night of totality - when they
need to use a looser definition. But this is constantly debated.

{Silverthorne}
Yep--I did point the  three day fact out in my first post...I'm not a
complete idiot--just half of one...*winks good naturedly and cackles*

{Shaun}
References I've seen to various withcraft, and astrological
traditions, tend to focus on either a three day or six day period.
But I'm a long way from being any type of expert on that.

Personally I think three days is a reasonable 'guess', but an
author can do what they like.

{Silverthorne}
*nods* Personal opinion is closer to the one day theory. The day before and
after I would ascribe more to the were version of PMS (Got that bloated,
icky, nasty feeling that makes you all pissy and mean...:P...).

Also, taking the scientific information into account, we can sort of fudge
the 'he didn't change until the moon popped out from behind the
clouds'--because if we accept that the strength of the moonlight directly
affects the transformation, then the clouds would have blocked the light
right up until then, thus sparing Remus the worst of it.

Although, then we're looking at another question--why don't werewolves just
go hide in some place where the moonlight cannot reach them for that night?
If it takes exposure to actual moonlight to trigger  the change, then surely
the smart ones at least (and I include Remus in this statement), can find an
appropiate hidey hole.

Then again, an appropriate hidey hole in Hogwarts would likely be...the
dungeons....
Wouldn't Snape just be ever so pleased??? *eg*

{Shaun}
Probably because if JKR took into account everything we come up
with, she'd be a stark raving maniac by now (-8


{Silverthorne}
Most likely. *g* then again, maybe that explains my own state of mind---I
tend to make at least the attempt to look at all possibilites when coming up
with ideas for RPG's that I run, including things like this...hmmmmm

Thanks for the scientific take, Shaun! Got to learn something ^^