How High the Moon

You’re listening to Les Paul and Mary Ford with How High the Moon from 1951, and…

You’re on the Sound Beat.

‘How High the Moon’ wasn’t a new song when Les Paul and Mary Ford recorded it. As a matter of fact the Les Paul Trio recorded a version on a V-Disc  (records made expressly for military personnel) in November, 1945.

So…how the high the moon? Depends on the time of year. During summer the tilt of the Earth’s axis points us toward the Sun during the day, so at night we are tilted away from the Moon, making it  lower in the sky. In the winter, reverse it: we are tilted toward the Moon at night, making it higher.

Listen to more Moon Month episodes right now!

Image credit: NASA

Photographed by an Expedition 28 crew member aboard the International Space Station, this image shows the moon at center, with the limb of Earth near the bottom transitioning into the orange-colored troposphere, the lowest and most dense portion of the Earth’s atmosphere. The troposphere ends abruptly at the tropopause, which appears in the image as the sharp boundary between the orange- and blue- colored atmosphere. The silvery-blue noctilucent clouds extend far above the Earth’s troposphere.