What Is The Moon?

Moon is the natural satellite of the Earth. It is is 384,400 kilometers away from the earth. The first man who landed on the moon was Neil Armstrong in 1969. For more details about moon, click here

The earth's moon is a solid almost spherical body 3,479 K.M in diameter, of mass 0.0123 times the mass of the earth. Is revolves in a slightly elliptical orbit about the earth with a sidereal period of 27 days 7 hours 43.2 minutes. Since its period of rotation is identical with its period of revolution it always keeps the same face toward the earth. The resulting changes in its aspect when viewed from the earth are called the phases of the moon.

The visible surface of the moon presents strongly contrasting physical relief, including mountains ranges (one rises 9,000 Meter above the surrounding plain) and walled craters of widely varying size and broad flat plains called "seas".

The moon lakes an atmosphere because the gravitational field at its surface (1/6 that of earth at its surface) is insufficient to retain gases at the temperature prevailing. About 41 % of moons surface is invisible from the earth as it always turns the same face towards the earth. The moon shines by the reflected light from the sun thus this sun light hemisphere is presented to us in varying amounts the phenomenon being known as phases.

The U.S.S.R landed the first probe on the moon (Feb. 1966) which relayed back to earth photographs of the lunar surface and other data.

The Moon is said to be the only natural satellite that earth has. It has no other name official name in the English language apart from the "The Moon", thought at times it is called Luna or Selena to differentiate it from the common term "moon".

The most linked adjective to the moon is lunar, though this is not found in permutations. The Moon is approximately 384,401 kilometers away from the Earth and the total diameter of the Moon is 3,476 kilometers. Sunlight which is reflected from the moon's surface hits the earth in about 1.3 seconds.  

The Luna program setup by the Soviet Union was the first ever unmanned vehicle to reach the moon. The first manned mission to the Moon was United States-Apollo program which was carried out in the year 1968.

One more thing the moon is believed by most scientist to have broken off the earth by an impact when it was forming.

The samples, brought back from there, lend some proof to that.
logic101