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The moon is the closet celestial body to Earth and the only one that's visisted by humans. It's about the size of Australia.
The moon pulls the tides in the oceans and even stabilizes the Earth's climate, keeping conditions on our planet favourable for life.
Newton stated that the Moon's gravity pulls strongest on the ocean-facing it, less hard on the center of the Earth. and least hard on the ocean facing away. Consequently, the oceans bulge in two directions: one side as the water is pulled away from the Earth and on the other as the Earth is pulled away from the water.
The cause of tides is thus not gravity but differences in gravity. Each day, two tides are created. There are tides in Earth rocks too, just as less as rocks are stiffer. These cause moonquakes and occasional eruptions of gas. Over time, such tidal forces have braked the Moon's rotation so it keeps one face to the Earth; it revolves on its axis simultaneously. But all sides of the moon receive sunlight: as the moon receive sunlight: as the moon orbits the Earth different parts are illuminated by the Sun, creating the "phases" seen. Tidal movement is sapping the Earth of energy, causing it to spin slower and the Moon to recede from the Earth.
The moon moves 3.8 cm away from the Earth per year. This is determined by bouncing laser light off reflectors left on the lunar surface by American and Russian spacecraft. Fist-sized reflects called "corner-cubes," reflect light back exactly to where it's from. By timing how long it takes light to return to the Earth, we calculate the distance to the Moon.
Corner-cubes left on the Moon may prove that humans never visited the Moon.
Diagram
Diagram
Total eclipse
Total eclipse
In a total eclipse, the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun, plunging the world into night in midday, decreasing the temperature dramatically, bats flying, and winds up. The Sun's diameter is roughly 400 times bigger than the Moon is also about 400 times farther away, making them both appear the same size in the sky.
Despite having 170 odd moons, no other total eclipses are happening in the Solar System.
"Big Splash" theory
"Big Splash" theory
Moon is believed to have been created when a young Earth collided with a Mars-sized body, creating an impact so strong that Earth's exterior turns molten.
Some debris is splashed off into space, creating the Moon.
Initially the Moon was 10 times closer, and raising tides 1000 times higher than today. From the Apollo program, it's found that the Moon is made of material similar to Earth's mantle, but drier than its terrestrial rocks.
12 men have walked on the Moon with one buried there: Gnee Shoemaker, famous for proving that Airzona's giant Meteor Crater is an impact scar. Being small, its gravity is 1/6 of the Earth's. With no atmosphere to scatter light, there's a huge contrast between bright areas and shadows, making photography hard.
A close view of a boulder after rolling and coming to est in a small crater.
Tiny moondusts collected by Neil Armstrong in the Apollo 11 mission, in the first moon trip, was worth $504,375 at an auction.
There was real fear after of Aurthur Clarke's sci-fi novel A Fall of Moondust was published that the moon was covered in a deep layer of quicksand-like dust, but is later to be a covered with a thin dust layer.
The Apollo crewmates couldn't get the moondust off their spacesuits and spelled like gunpowder. The particles can lodge into the lungs, causing breathing problems, which is feared to be toxic. Moondust is created by "micrometeorites" slamming into the Moon's surface.
The iterate micrometeorite bombardment will eventually make the footprints left by astronauts disappear, though it lasts a long time compared on Earth.
Large ones of course also bombard the Moon.
During the first mission to the moon, scientists were worried that the astronauts would encounter position substances or bring contamination back to Earth.
3 cockroaches ate the lunar dust and were killed. When scientists removed the dust from their stomachs, no evidence was fo to prove that the sample was toxic.
Copernic Crater
Copernic Crater
Roughly 800 million years ago, a 10 km wide asteroid hit the Moon, creating the 93 km wide Copernicus crater.
A geological map of the Moon.
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