Lunar is the name of the Earth’s only natural satellite called a Moon.
She is so important to us that we have a day specially named after it. Monday (Moon day).
She is deified as a Goddess to many cultures, one of the determining clock hands of our time measurement and a very fascinating celestial neighbour she is to us.
All of us have seen the moon, in fact we have spent countless nights mopping at it and imagining what actually that is, it has been a subject of our imaginations and lores as children.
Now let us quickly run through several facts about our dear Lunar to get to know her more
1. Formation
The events leading to the wedlock of our Dear Earth to her Moon was not a peaceful ceremony at all.
Not even close to being peaceful.
Early in the solar system’s formation, the whole system was a battle field of hot high speeding debris, asteroids and meteors crashing into each and other into planets.
The earth has gotten a very big share of these celestial bombardments of fire raining meteors of which we have craters testifying to this
So the first billion years of the earth was a very violent one of which brought about earth’s water delivered from these catastrophic bombardments of celestial bombs.
Though a subject of many scientific probings the most widely accepted theory on Moon’s formation is a head on collision between the earth and a Mars sized Asteroid named Theia.
These two very hot planetary objects in the early stage of the system formation 4.5billion years barely 50million years after the earth’s formation collided in a very violent and quaking union.
This collision released debris (remnants of the reaction) lead to the moon’s formation..
So the moon was a child of a violent wedlock between earth and theia.
2. The moon is as bright as Coal
Did i hear you say that? Yeah thats what we all are supposed to say to this one..
I mean we all see this glowing ball brightly throwing down silvery rays of a shadowy beam.
But in actuality the moon is a very very very Dark object not even brighter than a Coal.
The light we get from the moon has nothing to do with the moon, the moon has no light at all but rather acts as a reflective plate for the sunlight it gets from the sun..
You must have noticed that during a crescent or half moon you can see the remaining outline of the full moon but it remains pitch dark, that is because that side is shielded from direct sunlight.
Or during an eclipse the moon becomes a full mean ominous dark opaque object to us.
So without light from the sun hitting the moon, it is just one pitch black piece of coal..
Even with as much sunlight as it gets the moon has a very poor reflective ability that it only reflects 12% maximum of all the light it gets from the sun, compare this with Venus that reflects almost 75%.
If Venus was as close to us as the moon, our nights would just be like evening because Venus is way too bright no wonder it is called the morning sun, when do we get to sleep if that was the case?grin
The earth is by far brighter than the moon, the earth reflects more than 55% of the sun light it gets.. so the earth is more than 7times brighter than the moon.
So the moon is not a light and so doesn’t shine it only reflects a very poor amount of sunlight it gets..
3. The Moon Controls Our Ocean Tide
Yeah where are the “Avatar the last air bender’s Fans” Come out this is for you… The film clearly states the moon as the first water bender grin Well that is so so true because the moon is an important factor in the calibration of ocean tides.
Ok lets not make it look that too simple the moon is not only the factor here but just one of many. Others include the Sun, Earth’s rotation etc..
As you may have noticed, water is a very cohesive compound, water molecules always sticks together notice if you drop two pinch of water close together they merge into one whole.
So the earth’s centrifugal force caused by the rotation water molecules are being pulled away from the surface leading to a bulge near the equator than towards the pole
If the earth simply rotated on its own axis, then even though there would be this bulge there would be no tide. However, because the moon is very close to the earth, its gravity exerts an effect on the rotational system of the earth, causing it to also rotates in tandem with the moon on a different axis.
Because of this additional rotation, there is an additional centrifugal force exerted on the side of the earth that is away from the moon.
Thus, the centrifugal force is greatest on the side of the earth that is away from the moon, and there is a greater bulge in the water on that side.
That is how the moon’s tidal effects manifests on the earth’s ocean tides
4. The Moon is tidally locked to earth
Eheeeeem this should be a question that must have been bothering every curious mind we have here who one or two times might have looked up to gaze at the moon.
“Why is that we only see one side of the moon all the time”
Yes that is true, the moon is tidally locked.. This means that it takes the exact same amount of time for the moon to finish one orbital revolution and also achieve one full axial rotation therefore only one part of it is always faced towards the earth.
this is also known as Gravitational locking …
Following this you can now deduct that the reason why we always have one side of the moon facing us is that in the 28 days circle of the moon before another appearance it takes just about that time for it to fully rotate on it’s axis so when next it appears on earth we get to see the same side.
Moon axial period =28 days
earth’s axial period =24 hours..
See the difference ….
Due to this tidal lock one side of the moon remains perpetually darkened to us (We call this the “Dark side of the moon) and we get to only see just one side
5. Shape
Judging from what we see at night from the part of moon visible, one can conclude the moon is a perfect sphere and wouldn’t be blamed.
But the news is, The moon is not a perfect sphere not at all, the moon has a shape known as Oblate Spheroid …
This is a kind of sphere where the whole body is not perfectly uniformed but has bulging sides leading to little bit flattened poles.
Like a lemon
This is caused by by rotation of an ellipse around is smallest axial points..
Jupiter also has an Oblate spheroid shape but due to the fact that one bulging side of the moon is always visible to us we always perceive the moon’s shape to be spherical from
Here.
6. Water On the Moon
Wait wait wait Don’t freak out grin Yeah i know that just few months ago liquid water was announced on Mars but calm down there’ve always been water on Mars though Frozen we were just surprised to find liquid ones.
So back to the moon, Yes there is water on the moon and many planetary bodies in this Solar system though the conditions on these bodies makes it unlikely for water to thrive in liquid state.
Earth is the only planet were water exists in liquid form in a large scale, Mars has joined the list but just in a small scale.
Over the years there have been speculations of Frozen water lurking in the hidden craters on the moon surface.
Not until the most recent man made probe (LRO) to the moon started orbiting the satellite has the picture became ever clearer.
From Data curled from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms have been detected just in the Lunar surface showing there is Water Molecules lurking within the Lunar soil.
Yes it may not be flowing swimmable water type found on earth but in this regard Water is water.
Since has reaffirmed the idea that within some perpetually darkened craters in the lunar world, there may be Frozen water on them.
But all in all the LRO has satisfied our taste for that answer as it confirms that water molecules indeed exists on the moon too..
7. Gravity
Uuuhm like “Everything you throw up must surely come down” Yeah that too works on the moon contrary to the myth that if you are on the moon you will be floating around because there is no gravity.
No, there is gravitational pull on the moon only just drastically lesser than that of the earth.
Gravity is as a result of the distortion of space/time by Mass, so the greater the mass the greater the distortion (Gravity)
Will like us all to take a little experiment to show how gravity works. Take a sheet of clothing or net and spread (suspend in mid air) it across on all four angles (this represents space/time) then bring a heavy object and place it on the fabrics.
You will notice the fabric dents with the weight of the object then bring an object of lesser weight and put within the boundary of the dent you will notice that it will slide down towards the center of the dent.. That is gravity..
So back to the Moon’s gravity, the Mass of earth is greater than that of the moon so the distortion of space/time by earth is far more greater.
That is why we witness a gravitational pull of about 9.8m/s approximately 10m/s while on the moon is roughly 1.6m/s.
So notice the deference..
N.B: The moon has no atmosphere so is almost like a Vacuum, this means there is no air resistance on object thrown upwards.. A kite thrown up would glide with the air on earth but on the moon it would fall back down..).
8. Size
There are officially 181 natural satellites orbitting planets and mini-planets in this solar system (A planet like jupiter and Saturn has up to 67 and 64 moons respectively) Greedy bastards angry
Few of these Moons are massive enough to achieve hydrostatic equilibrium so if they orbited the sun directly and not planets they would have been dubbed planets or mini-planets
With Ganymede topping the list of the largest moon in the solar system, this moon of jupiter is larger than Mercury and Pluto.
Our moon comes 5th in the list of largest satellites in the solar system but comes 2nd when the size of the moon is compared with the size of it’s host planet with almost 1/4 of the earth’s size.
with a surface of 37.9 million square kilometers its actually slightly smaller than the continent Asia which is 44million square kilometers
9. The Moon is drifting Away
Yes thats a sad one but very very slowly we are loosing the moon as it drifts further away from us.
The Apollo missions saw the installment of Reflectors on the moon’s surface and from here we shoot laser beams to the reflectors to determine the distance between us and our moon and datas provided shows it is moving away from us though at a very minute rate of 3.8 Cm per year.
So billions of years ago in the early history of the earth the moon would have been so close to the earth that it appears so in the sky
with time the moon will continue drifting slowly further away from the earth until the gravitational attraction from the sun on it becomes greater than that of the earth on it and then earth will become a moonless planet just like mecury and venus are moonless.
The presence of the moon in the earth’s tidal system is slowing the planet down gradually by 2milisecond per century.
So the earth’s axial period is getting longer every century by 2milisecond, going backward into the earth’s history there would be a time the planet is spinning so fast that a day would rarely last 18hours
10. Visitation
Many planetary bodies in the solar system has man made probes orbiting them and taking readings sending back to us a wealth of data for study.
Mars and the Moon are the only of these bodies that has man made probing rovers inside on their surface while the moon holds the record for the only celestial body to have ever seen another human.
Out of all the planets, moons, asteroids and dwarf-planets man has only being able to to make a trip to the moon which is just a three days ride with the amount of technology at our disposal.
There have been 6 manned missions to the moon (The Apollo missions) and another manned mission due for 2023.
This time it won’t be for few hours but long days of study on the surface of the moon by astronauts.
Its no doubt that the future may see a wild range of space exploration starting from our solar system, manned missions to Mars by 2030’s the moon is the closest of this frontier and so hopefully will get more visit than any of the planetary bodies around.
The Apollo missions showed us there is no limit to what man can achieve as man has left an enduring footprint on the surface of the moon as a mark of his tremendous achievement.
Hopefully Mars gets to feel the mark of a live human on it’s surface soon enough and in no distant future technologies that can take us beyond our solar system to explore planets in other star systems will be available.
With all the knowledge we gain from our study of the heavens, it should humble us and give us a sense of belonging and give us the insight to look at our own earth as a jewel that deserves to be preserved because mankind must put an end to senseless exploitation and violence or we will end up killing the earth and killing the earth is our own end.
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