The Moon :: essays research papers

The bootlegThe dream is the only natural satellite of Earth. The lunation orbits the Earth from 384,400 km and has an average speed of 3700 km per hour. It has a diam of 3476 km, which is well-nigh that of the Earth and has a mass of 7.35e22 kg. The lunar month is the second brightest fair game in the sky after the sun.The gravitational forces between the Earth and the moon cause some interesting effects tides are the most obvious. The moon has no atmosphere, but there is evidence by the United States discussion section of Defense Clementine spacecraft shows that there maybe water crackpot in some deep craters near the moons North and South stake that are permanently shaded. Most of the moons surface is covered with regolith, which is a form of fine dust and rocky debris produced by meteor impact. on that point are two types of terrain on the moon. One is the heavily cratered and very of age(predicate) highlands. The other is the relatively smooth and younger craters th at were flooded with molten lava. end-to-end the 19th and 20th centuries, visual exploration by dint of powerful telescopes has yielded a fairly comprehensive picture of the visible side of the moon. The hitherto unobserved far side of the moon was first revealed to the world in October 1959 through photographs made by the Soviet Lunik III spacecraft. These photographs showed that the far side of the moon is similar to the near side except that large lunar mare are absent. Craters are now known to cover the full(a) moon, ranging in size from huge, ringed maria to those of microscopic size. The entire moon has about 3 trillion craters larger than about 1 m in diameter.The moon shows different phases as it moves along its orbit around the terra firma. half(prenominal) the moon is always in sunlight, just as half the earth has day while the other half has night. The phases of the moon depend on how much of the sunlit half can be seen at every one time. In the new moon, the face is completely in shadow. nigh a week later, the moon is in first quarter, resembling a half-circle some other week later, the full moon shows its fully lighted surface a week afterward, in its last quarter, the moon appears as a half-circle again. The entire cycle is repeated each lunar month, which is approximately 29.