1st / Moon / Vaughn

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The Moon


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Table of Contents

Pg 3How the Moon Was Formed Pg 4 Physical Characteristics Pg 5 Crossword Pg 6-7 The Moon’s Effect on the Earth Pg 8 Random Facts Pg 9-10 Composition of the Moon Pg 11 Phases of the Moon and The Orbit of the moon Pg 12 the Mission to the Moon


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How the Moon Was Formed Several mechanisms have been proposed for the Moon's formation 4.527 ± 0.010 billion years ago, some 30–50 million years after the origin of the Solar System. These included the fission of the Moon from the Earth's crust through centrifugal force, which would require too great an initial spin of the Earth, the gravitational capture of a pre-formed Moon, which would require an unfeasibly extended atmosphere of the Earth to dissipate the energy of the passing Moon, and the co-formation of the Earth and the Moon together in the primordial accretion disk, which does not explain the depletion of metallic iron in the Moon. These hypotheses also cannot account for the high angular momentum of the Earth–Moon system. The prevailing hypothesis today is that the Earth–Moon system formed as a result of a giant impact: a Mars-sized body hitting the newly formed proto-Earth, blasting material into orbit around it, which accreted to form the Moon. Giant impacts are thought to have been common in the early Solar System. Computer simulations modeling a giant impact are consistent with measurements of the angular momentum of the Earth– Moon system, and the small size of the lunar core; they also show that most of the Moon came from the impactor, not from the proto-Earth. More recent tests suggest more of the Moon coalesced from the Earth and not the impactor... Meteorites show that other inner Solar System bodies such as Mars and Vesta have very different oxygen and tungsten isotopic compositions to the Earth, while the Earth and Moon have near-identical isotopic compositions. Post-impact mixing of the vaporized material between the forming Earth and Moon could have equalized their isotopic compositions, although this is debated

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Physical Characteristics The diameter of the Moon is 3,474 km. Need some comparison? The diameter of the Earth is 12,742 km across. That means that the Moon size is roughly 1/4th the size of the Earth. It is hard to measure the actual size of the moon but we are pretty close to the right size. The mean radius is 1737.10 km the moon is about 20% of the earth (.2 earths). The volume of the Moon is 2.1958 × 1010 km3 the moon’s volume is about 2% of the earth. The mass of the moon is 7.3477 x 10²² kg it is 1% of the earth’s mass. The surface area of the moon is 3.793 x 10⁷ km². The circumference is 10,921 km (equatorial). The circumference of the earth is 40,075.017 km (equatorial) it is about 27% of the earth.

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Crossword

Across 2. Drives over planets exploring them 4. A moon that circles a planet 5. Where the word "moon" originates from 6. When the moon is full in the sky Down 1. The densest satellite 3. The name (last name) of the president when the idea of a man on the moon conceived 5. The first successful space rover Answers at the bottom of page 12


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The Moon’s Effect on Earth

The tides on the Earth are mostly generated by the gradient in intensity of the Moon's gravitational pull from one side of the Earth to the other, the tidal forces. This forms two tidal bulges on the Earth, which are most clearly seen in elevated sea level as ocean tides. Since the Earth spins about 27 times faster than the Moon moves around it, the bulges are dragged along with the Earth's surface faster than the Moon moves, rotating around the Earth once a day as it spins on its axis. The ocean tides are magnified by other effects: frictional coupling of water to Earth's rotation through the ocean floors, the inertia of water's movement, ocean basins that get shallower near land, and oscillations between different ocean basins. The gravitational attraction of the Sun on the Earth's oceans is almost half that of the Moon, and their gravitational interplay is responsible for spring and neap tides.

The libration of the Moon over a single lunar month.

Gravitational coupling between the Moon and the bulge nearest the Moon acts as a torque on the Earth's rotation, draining angular momentum and rotational kinetic energy from the Earth's spin. In turn, angular momentum is added to the Moon's orbit, accelerating it, which lifts the Moon into a higher orbit with a longer period. As a result, the distance between the Earth and Moon are increasing and the Earth's spin slowing down? Measurements from lunar ranging experiments with laser reflectors left during the Apollo missions have found that the Moon's distance to the Earth increases by 38 mm per year (though this is only 0.10 ppb/year of the radius of the Moon's orbit). Atomic clocks also show that the Earth's day lengthens by about 15 microseconds every year, slowly increasing the rate at which UTC is adjusted by leap seconds. Left to run its course, this tidal drag would continue until the spin of the Earth and the orbital period of the Moon matched. However, the Sun will become a red giant long before that, engulfing the Earth.


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The lunar surface also experiences tides of amplitude ~10 cm over 27 days, with two components: a fixed one due to the Earth, as they are in synchronous rotation, and a varying component from the Sun. The Earth-induced component arises from libration, a result of the Moon's orbital eccentricity; if the Moon's orbit were perfectly circular, there would only be solar tides. Libration also changes the angle from which the Moon is seen, allowing about 59% of its surface to be seen from the Earth (but only half at any instant). The cumulative effects of stress built up by these tidal forces produces moonquakes. Moonquakes are much less common and weaker than earthquakes, although they can last for up to an hour – a significantly longer time than terrestrial earthquakes – because of the absence of water to damp out the seismic vibrations. The existence of moonquakes was an unexpected discovery from seismometers placed on the Moon by Apollo astronauts from 1969 through 1972.

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Random Facts

The noun moon derives from moone (around 1380), which developed from mone (1135), which derives from Old English mōna (dating from before 725), which, like all Germanic language cognates, ultimately stems from Proto-Germanic *mǣnōn. Several mechanisms have been proposed for the Moon's formation 4.527 ± 0.010 billion years ago. The prevailing hypothesis today is that the Earth–Moon system formed as a result of a giant impact. The Moon has a solid iron-rich inner core with a radius of 240 kilometers and a fluid outer core primarily made of liquid iron with a radius of roughly 300 kilometers. The Moon is the second densest satellite in the Solar System after Io. When exposed to solar radiation, water quickly decomposes through a process known as photo dissociation and is lost to space The gravitational field of the Moon has been measured through tracking the Doppler shift of radio signals emitted by orbiting spacecraft The Moon has an atmosphere so tenuous as to be nearly vacuum, with a total mass of less than 10 metric tons. The Moon's axial tilt with respect to the Ecliptic is only 1.54° The Moon makes a complete orbit around the Earth with respect to the fixed stars about once every 27.3 days The Moon is exceptionally large relative to the Earth. The highest altitude of the Moon in the sky varies. Understanding of the Moon's cycles was an early development of astronomy. The Cold War-inspired Space Race between the Soviet Union and the U.S. led to an acceleration of interest in exploration of the Moon.

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What is the Moon made of? Start by looking at its surface. This picture shows it very well. There are light areas and dark areas. The dark areas are called seas, but they do not contain water. The seas are flat regions, whereas the light areas are rugged and are higher on average. For this reason, they are also called highlands. Across the whole surface, craters caused by meteoric impacts are evident. The craters are much more enhanced and frequent within the light areas. In the years from 1969 to 1972 the Moon has been explored by man. Astronauts brought back to Earth some samples of lunar soil, so it has been possible to analyze and date those rocks. It has been found that the younger lunar rocks are the dark ones, those of the seas, and that they are 3.2 billion years old. The older ones are the light rocks of the highlands, and they are 4.6 billion years old.


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Even if the mass of the Moon is just one hundredth of that of the Earth, the ratio of the mass of the Moon over that of the Earth is very large, if one compares it to the case of the other planets. Leaving aside the Pluto-Charon system, the Earth-Moon system is indeed a unique case in the Solar System. Generally speaking, satellites are much smaller than the planets which hold them into an orbit. A well known phenomenon is connected to this peculiarity. Question

Why does the Moon always show the same side to the Earth? Because it is motionless (it does not rotate) Because it rotates about its axis and orbits around the Earth with the same speed. Because it rotates about its axis in one day, so the next day we will see always the same side

Answer at the bottom of page 12.

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Phases of the Moon and Rotation

Sunlight is shown coming in from the right. The earth, of course, is at the center of the diagram. The moon is shown at 8 key stages during its revolution around the earth. The moon phase name is shown alongside the image. The dotted line from the earth to the moon represents your line of sight when looking at the moon. To help you visualize how the moon would appear at that point in the cycle, you can look at the larger moon image. This means for the waning gibbous, third quarter, and waning crescent phases you have to mentally turn yourself upside down. When you do this, you'll "see" that the illuminated portion is on your left, just as you see in the large image. One important thing to notice is that exactly one half of the moon is always illuminated by the sun. Of course that is perfectly logical, but you need to visualize it in order to understand the phases. At certain times we see both the sunlit portion and the shadowed portion -- and that creates the various moon phase shapes we are all familiar with. Also note that the shadowed part of the moon is invisible to the naked eye; in the diagram above, it is only shown for clarification purposes. So the basic explanation is that the lunar phases are created by changing angles (relative positions) of the earth, the moon and the sun, as the moon orbits the earth.

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The Mission to the Moon The Apollo program was the spaceflight effort carried out by the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) that landed the first humans on Earth's Moon. Conceived during the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Apollo began in earnest after President John F. Kennedy proposed the national goal of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" by the end of the 1960s in a May 25, 1961 address to Congress. Kennedy's goal was accomplished with the Apollo 11 mission when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed their Lunar Module (LM) on the Moon on July 20, 1969 and walked on its surface while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the command spacecraft, and all three landed safely on Earth on July 24. Five subsequent Apollo missions also landed astronauts on the Moon, the last in December 1972. In these six spaceflights, 12 men walked on the Moon. These are the only times humans have landed on another celestial body. Apollo ran from 1961 to 1972, following the Mercury and Gemini programs. It used Saturn family rockets as launch vehicles. Apollo / Saturn vehicles were also used for an Apollo Applications program which consisted of three Skylab space station missions in 1973–74, and a joint U.S.–Soviet mission in 1975. Apollo was successful despite two major setbacks: the 1967 Apollo 1 cabin fire that killed the entire crew during a pre-launch test; and an in-flight failure on the 1970 Apollo 13 flight which disabled the command spacecraft's propulsion and life support, forcing the crew to use the Lunar Module as a "lifeboat" for these functions until they could return to Earth safely. Apollo set major milestones in human spaceflight. It stands alone in sending manned missions beyond low Earth orbit; Apollo 8 was the first manned spacecraft to orbit another celestial body, while Apollo 17 marked the last moonwalk and the last manned mission beyond low Earth orbit]. The program spurred advances in many areas of technology incidental to rocketry and manned spaceflight, including avionics, telecommunications, and computers. Apollo also sparked interest in many fields of engineering and left many physical facilities and machines developed for the program as landmarks. Its command modules and other objects and artifacts are displayed throughout the world, notably in the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museums in Washington, DC and at NASA's centers in Florida, Texas and Alabama. The Apollo 13 Command Module is housed at the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson, Kansas. Answer three is correct Question Answer pg 10


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