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THE SOLAR SYSTEM

SOL

MERCURY

VENUS

EARTH

METEORS

MOON

MARS

ASTEROIDS

JUPITER

SATURN

URANUS

NEPTUNE

PLUTO

COMETS

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There are nights when the wolves are silent, and only the Moon howls. George Carlin

I like to think that the Moon is there, even if I am not looking at it. Albert Einstein

O, swear not by the Moon, the inconstant Moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.
Shakespeare - Romeo and Juliet: Act 2, Scene 2

The Moon

It can be safely said that no heavenly body has received more literary attention than the Moon - and rightly so. The Moon is only 240,000 miles away, a mere stone's-throw in cosmic terms, and with a diameter of 2,172 miles, larger than the dwarf planet Pluto. So it's no wonder its apparition in our sky moves the hearts and minds of men. But the Moon moves a lot more than that. It moves oceans, its gravitational pull causing them to bulge in the centre, creating tides. And it moves the entire planet Earth, because although we chauvinistically tend to think of the Moon as a lowly satellite of Earth, the truth is that Earth and the Moon actually orbit each other, whirling together in a grand cosmic waltz around the Sun. No other celestial object other than the Sun has as much direct, measurable effect on Earth, and its inhabitants. Because of its proximity, the Moon's gravity has twice the pull of the Sun on Earth's waters. Consider that the human body is 60% water, and next time you're out under the full Moon, see if you can feel it.

On Dec. 16, 1990, NASA's Galileo spacecraft, on its way to explore the planet Jupiter, looked back from a distance of 3.9 million miles, and took the extraordinary photo below of the Moon and Earth together. To perceive the true perspective of this two dimensional image, the mind must add the third dimension, because the Moon is not as close to Earth as it appears. The Moon is actually in the foreground, 200,000 miles closer to the camera than Earth, moving from left to right.

On July 20, 1969, the human species first set foot on a celestial body other than Earth, and that body was the Moon. Over the next three years a total of twelve men would walk on the Moon. Some of them would drive dune buggies called Lunar Rovers, as in the photo below of the Apollo 17 Moon landing. One of them would even hit a golf ball on the Moon. The wealth of data they brought back to Earth, including 850 pounds of Moon rocks and soil, will take generations to analyse. It was without doubt, as Neil Armstrong put it, "...a giant leap for mankind", that hasn't been matched since.

Earth's strong gravity tugging on the Moon for billions of years has slowly but surely slowed the rotation of the Moon so that it now equals its orbital period - 27.3 days - which means that the same side of the Moon always faces Earth. The surface of the Moon is covered with impact craters, and large smooth areas which ancient observers named Maria, which is Latin for Seas. Now we understand that at one time they were seas, but seas of molten rock, generated from the intense heat of impacts with extremely large meteorites, billions of years ago - when the planets in the solar system were still forming. The most prominent features on the Moon are featured on the map below.

The first step in learning to appreciate the full glory of the Moon is to perceive it as a three dimensional globe, instead of a two dimensional disk. The best way to do this is to look at the Moon through binoculars. The next step is to understand why the Moon appears to grow from a slim crescent to full, and back again. This is because the Moon does not generate any light of its own. It can only reflect the light of the Sun, and since the sunlight only comes from one direction, it can only light up one side of the Moon at a time. If the sunlit side of the Moon is facing away from us, then we cannot see it at all. This happens every time the Moon is between Earth and the Sun, and is called the new Moon. As the Moon moves off to the side we begin to see a small sliver of the Moon. This is the crescent Moon. When the Moon is at right angles to the Sun, we see half of its sunlit side, called a quarter Moon. Finally, approximately fourteen days after first becoming visible as a crescent, the Moon is directly opposite the Sun in our sky and we can see its entire sunlit face. This is a full Moon.

The Moon takes approximately 28 days to complete one cycle from new to full, and back to new again. This means we experience approximately one full Moon every month. On the rare occasions when two full Moons manage to squeeze into the same calendar month, the second full Moon is known as a Blue Moon. Since antiquity, all full Moons have had special names, depending on the month in which they occur. These names have varied with different times and cultures. Below is a list of the full Moon names most commonly used today.

When the Moon becomes full twice in the same month, the second full Moon is known as a Blue Moon, and they are a rare phenomenon. Since the Moon becomes full every 28 days, it is not often that it becomes full twice in the same month. At the time of this writing, the last Blue Moon was on May 31, 2007. The next one won't occur until December, 2009, and for the one after that we will have to wait until August, 2012. The original definition of a Blue Moon was much more complicated. The term originally referred to the third full Moon in one season, with the four seasons defined as beginning and ending with the two equinoxes and the two solstices, not the calendar months. As to be expected, this confusing definition of a Blue Moon became simplified over time to describe the second full Moon in a calendar month.

The Harvest Moon

The Harvest Moon - George Mason - 1872 (click to enlarge)

The full Moon closest to the Fall Equinox (approximately September 22) is called the Harvest Moon. Before the days of electric lights, the Harvest Moon played an important role in the lives of farmers. In order for the Sun to light up the full face of the Moon, the Moon must be directly opposite the Sun in the sky, rising in the east just as the Sun sets in the west. The full Moon rising late in September, just as farmers were harvesting their crops, provided them with light through the night, so they could keep working, and bring their produce in from the fields before it spoiled - in ancient times literally a matter of life or death. This highly anticipated full Moon became known as the Harvest Moon. With so much vigourous harvesting going on, the air often became filled with dust, giving the Harvest Moon a rich golden hue.

The Man In The Moon?

As seen in the photo above, the Moon can sometimes look like a man's face, with the Sea of Serenity (Mare Serenitatis) and the Sea of Tranquility (Mare Tranquillitatis) composing a pair of large, close set eyes, the Sea of Vapours (Mare Vaporum) forming the bridge of a long nose, and the Sea of Clouds (Mare Nubium) looking like a mouth wide open in surprise, or laughter. This must have been the Moon that Tom Robbins (author of Another Roadside Attraction, Even cowgirls Get The Blues etc.) was looking at when he described it as a clown's head dipped in honey. (The above photo of the nearly full Moon rising in the east was taken from the front porch of the Cariboo Skies Observatory, January 31, 2007.)

In addition to the true scientific wonders of the Moon and its relationship to Earth, one must marvel at the seemingly magical forces that keep this massive celestial body so precariously suspended in our sky, and how such a lifeless ball of rock can be filled with so much soul. (The photo below of the crescent Moon (complete with Earthshine faintly illuminating the rest of the Moon) and the planet Venus just below it, was taken from the back deck of the Cariboo Skies Observatory, February 14, 2007.

(Click on image to enlarge)

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