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The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite, orbiting at an average distance of 384 399 km (238,854 mi; 30 Earths across).It faces Earth always with the same side.This is a result of Earth's gravitational pull having synchronized the Moon's rotation period with its orbital period (lunar month) of 29.5 Earth days.
The Moon appears to be more yellowish near the horizon. This is for the same reason the Sun and/or sky appears to be orangey-red at sunrise/sunset. When the Moon appears near the horizon, the light coming from it has to pass through more layers of atmosphere. This scatters the blue away, and leaves yellow, orange, and red. [10]
Lunar nearside with major maria and craters labeled. Lunar maria (singular mare) are large, dark, regions of the Moon.They do not contain any water, but are believed to have been formed from molten rock from the Moon's mantle coming out onto the surface of the Moon.
[9] [10] [11] A calendrical blue moon (by Pruett's definition) is predictable and relatively common, happening 7 times in every 19 years (i.e. once every 2 or 3 years). [2] Calendrical blue moons occur because the time between successive full moons (approximately 29.5 days) is shorter than the average calendar month. [12]
The "harvest moon" (also known as the "barley moon" or "full corn moon") is the full moon nearest to the autumnal equinox (22 or 23 September), occurring anytime within two weeks before or after that date. [18] The "hunter's moon" is the full moon following it. The names are recorded from the early 18th century. [19]
The Moon's heavily cratered far-side. The origin of the Moon is usually explained by a Mars-sized body striking the Earth, creating a debris ring that eventually collected into a single natural satellite, the Moon, but there are a number of variations on this giant-impact hypothesis, as well as alternative explanations, and research continues into how the Moon came to be formed.
Artist's depiction of a collision between two planetary bodies. Such an impact between Earth and a Mars-sized object likely formed the Moon.. The giant-impact hypothesis, sometimes called the Theia Impact, is an astrogeology hypothesis for the formation of the Moon first proposed in 1946 by Canadian geologist Reginald Daly.
She had the Moon tracked in her chambers and wrote poems about her divine Moon. [14] A particularly important early development was the beginning of mathematical and scientific astronomy, which began among the Babylonians, who laid the foundations for the later astronomical traditions that developed in many other civilizations. [15]