The Moon

The brightest extraterrestrial object at night, the moon is the only satellite of the earth. It derives its illumination from reflected sunlight. As it travels around the earth, the visible amount of sunlit area changes day by day so that it creates a cycle of lunar phase. From New moon to full moon there is waxing of the moon’s visible area. And after the full moon and back to the new moon there is a waning of the moon’s visible area. Craters on the surface of the moon are the result of massive bombardment of meteors in the last billion of years.  

                       

The moon is an airless, waterless and lifeless earth satellite. It is about 384,400 kilometers from the earth, and is about a quarter of its size. It orbits the earth at an average rate of 27.3 earth days on an average velocity of 1 kilometer per second. A complete rotation of the moon has also an average of 27.3 earth days. This synchronization of motion is the reason why only one side of the moon or the near side is turned toward the earth in many days. The other or far side is always faced away from the earth. 

Earth’s gravitational pull affects moon’s orbital and rotational motions. The moon has only about 16 per cent of the earth’s gravity. However, the moon causes the level of water in the seas and oceans to rise or fall. Its gravitational pull is the cause of the phenomena which are called high tide and low tide.

Man is awed by the brightest spectacle in the night sky since time immemorial. In reverence to the moon, ancient people considered or made it their god. There were several moon gods in different places in ancient cultures. The word lunatic from the Latin “luna” or moon describes a person whose sanity is affected by a particular phase of the moon.