Family Concerns

Except for the Sun, our Moon is the most brilliant visible thing in our sky, and has been a topic of discussion for thousands of years. Brighty visible to the naked eye, the Moon is our closest neighbor and our satellite; even to the naked eye, it reveals shaded areas that, under further investigation with your AstroVenture 90mm Portable telescope or 10 x 32 BR Ultravid Mid Size Leica Binoculars reveals craters, seas and mountain ranges, as varied as the Earth’s own surface.

The Moon has had the distinction of having been studied more thoroughly than any other object in our sky. It has highlands and lightly cratered seas that give the moon its texture. The formation of our Moon is one that is a bit singular in the history of our solar system. Other moons formed out of protoplanatary disks, much like the planets. Our Moon, on the other hand, is thought to have been created when an object that was about the size of Mars struck the earth and shattered; the resulting debris would then coalesce to form the Moon that we see every night.

When the Moon appears fully in the sky and is not obscured by its position, we can see the lunar maria, the lunar seas that anciently were believed to be full of water. Now we have discovered that the moon is full of ancient solid lava known as basalt. The seas were formed when meteors and asteroids hit the Moon’s surface. These maria are found primarily on the side of the moon “facing” the earth, with far fewer {collisions|impacts| having occurred on the far side.

The atmosphere of the Moon is almost nonexistant and one of its main sources is outgassing, when gases like radon are created from the radioactive decay of the minerals in the crust of the Moon’s surface. The other source for the Moon’s atmosphere is the bombardment of tiny meteorites and ions from the solar wind.

In recent years, one of the most fascinating discoveries about the Moon is the fact it might contain packets of ice water. Due to comets and meteors hitting the moon nearly continuously, water has been brought to the Moon. But it was theorized that the weak gravity and the sunlight would split it down to hydrogen and oxygen and spin it off into space. It was discovered, though, that there are craters on the moon that are in permanent shadow, and that the water that rests in these shadow could be quite stable for long periods of time. The presence of water on the Moon, a subject which has seen hot debate is still contested at this time.

Besides the Earth, the Moon is the heavenly body in our solar system that we know the most about, but in many ways, it is still a mystery to us. Only time will tell us more about our closest neighbor and our only satellite.

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“Men go into space .. to see whether it is the kind of place where other men, and their families and their children, can eventually follow them. A disturbingly high proportion of the intelligent young are discontented because they find the life before them intolerably confining. The moon offers a new frontier. It is as simple and splendid as that.” Editorial on the moon landing, The Economist, 1969

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