created
by
Jolie McIlvain
I am a student at Emporia State University. This web page was created
for an Introduction to Earth Science Lab in accordance with Chapter 12
"The Moon" from the "Introduction to Earth Science Lab" Book. My page will expand on information about the moon, history, and phases.
Earth and Moon What Information are you interested in?
This is a image is a mosaic and space-based perspective recorded by NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous spacecraft and was taken from:
APOD: January 29, 1998 - The Earth-Moon System.
General Information
History
Phases
References and Links
The Moon is the only natural satellite
that the earth has rotating it. It circles with the earth as we rotate
around the Sun. The diameter of the moon is 3475 km or 2150 miles, approximately one-fourth of the Earth's 12,751 km diameter (Tarbuck and Lutgens, 2000, p. 551). The moon's density is 3.3 times that of water compared with Earth's average density that ais 5.5 times that of water (Tarbuck and Lutgens, 2000, p. 551). The gravitational attraction is less than on Earth and the moon's gravitational forces create tides on Earth.
The Earth's moon is one of the largest moons for the known planets, and for Earth viewers, the second brightest object in the sky next to the Sun. The lack of oceans and atmosphere makes the appearance of it dull and drab looking as compared to Earth. Since there is no atmosphere or magnetic field, the Moon is direct by solar
winds.
An interesting phenomena with the Earth-Moon system are the solar and lunar eclipse events. If the Moon, Earth, and the Sun were on equal planes, we would experience a solar eclipse every new moon and a lunar eclipse every full moon. This does not occur though, due to the fact that the plane of revolution for the moon is 5 degrees off from the Earth's orbital plane.
People have pondered over the history of the moon for years and some of the moon's craters are named after famous figures in the history of astronomy, including Tycho Brahe, Nicolaus Copernicus, and Ptolemy.
The three moon origin theories popular during the time of the Apollo moon missions were:
1. co-accretion - Earth and Moon formed at the same time
The Theory of Impact is a more recent theory, in which it is believed the Earth collided with the a very large object and formed the Moon.
2. fission - the Moon split off from the earth
3. capture - the Moon was created somewhere else and captured by the Earth
This image was taken from the Phases of the Moon, a portion of an online astronomy course at Cornell University.
Earth's Moon has eight different phases in a course of just over 29 days called the synodic month. Although half of the moon is lit at all times, the different portion of the lighted side, as seen from Earth, make up the phases. Each phases has a different name:
Image taken from The Moon"
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Created: 11/25/99; Updated: 12/04/99.