Friday, May 12, 2006
Full Moon
Day: Friday
Date: 12th May 2006
Time: 0900 hours

Check this out! It's a FULL MOON tonight! Bloody cool!! Tonight's moon is known as a Full Flower Moon - May. In most areas, flowers are abundant everywhere during this time. Thus, the name of this Moon. Other names include the Full Corn Planting Moon, or the Milk Moon. The predicted day and time for the full moon to appear this month is on MAY 13. The full moon has been linked to crime, suicide, mental illness, disasters, accidents, birthrates, fertility, and werewolves, among other things. Some people even buy and sell stocks according to phases of the moon, a method probably as successful as many others. Numerous studies have tried to find lunar effects. So far, the studies have failed to establish much of interest. Lunar effects that have been found have little or nothing to do with human behavior. So don't make any excuses if you act a bit crazy tonight...It has nothing to do with the moon.

The next phase for the moon is the last quarter. Then the last phase is the NEW MOON.The first quarter of the moon happened on May 5, 2006. Quite some time ago.It is predicted that the last quarter moon will appear on May 20,2006. It is also predicted that the new moon will appear May 27, 2006. Let's see if it will appear as predicted.

Here's some interesting facts about the moon....

As you read this, the Moon is moving away from us. Each year, the Moon steals some of Earth's rotational energy, and uses it to propel itself about 3.8 centimeters higher in its orbit. Researchers say that when it formed, the Moon was about 14,000 miles (22,530 kilometers) from Earth. It's now more than 280,000 miles, or 450,000 kilometers away.

Our Moon is bigger than Pluto. And at roughly one-fourth the diameter of Earth, some scientists think the Moon is more like a planet. They refer to the Earth-Moon system as a "double planet." Pluto and its moon Charon are also called a double-planet system by some.

Apollo astronauts used seismometers during their visits to the Moon and discovered that the gray orb isn't a totally dead place, geologically speaking. Small moonquakes, originating several miles (kilometers) below the surface, are thought to be caused by the gravitational pull of Earth. Sometimes tiny fractures appear at the surface, and gas escapes.

Scientists say they think the Moon probably has a core that is hot and perhaps partially molten, as is Earth's core. But data from NASA's Lunar Prospector spacecraft showed in 1999 that the Moon's core is small -- probably between 2 percent and 4 percent of its mass. This is tiny compared with Earth, in which the iron core makes up about 30 percent of the planet's mass.

The Moon is not round (or spherical). Instead, it's shaped like an egg. If you go outside and look up, one of the small ends is pointing right at you. And the Moon's center of mass is not at the geometric center of the satellite; it's about 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) off-center.

More than 400 trees on Earth came from the Moon. Well, okay: They came from lunar orbit. Okay, the truth: In 1971, Apollo 14 astronaut Stuart Roosa took a bunch of seeds with him and, while Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell were busy sauntering around on the surface, Roosa guarded his seeds.
Later, the seeds were germinated on Earth, planted at various sites around the country, and came to be called the Moon trees. Most of them are doing just fine. Ooohh....There's moon trees around us...

Perhaps the coolest thing about the Moon is that it always shows us the same face. Since both the Earth and Moon are rotating and orbiting, how can this be? Long ago, the Earth's gravitational effects slowed the Moon's rotation about its axis. Once the Moon's rotation slowed enough to match its orbital period (the time it takes the Moon to go around Earth) the effect stabilized. Many of the moons around other planets behave similarly. What about phases? Here's how they work: As the Moon orbits Earth, it spends part of its time between us and the Sun, and the lighted half faces away from us. This is called a new Moon. (So there's no such thing as a "dark side of the Moon," just a side that we never see.)
As the Moon swings around on its orbit, a thin sliver of reflected sunlight is seen on Earth as a crescent Moon. Once the Moon is opposite the Sun, it becomes fully lit from our view -- a full Moon.

Enough about moon facts...Now... I just love gazing at the moon. Beautiful, breath-taking sight. Simply amazing. Try this! Your firstmoon gazing should be with the naked eye. Become familiar with the Moon's major features. Then use binoculars to study the features more closely. Learn the names of a few craters and plains (called maria, after the Latin word "mare," which means sea).If you want, you can use the telescope for better explorations of the moon.Even if you don't have a telescope or a pair of binoculars, you can go out and look at the Moon and make a discovery. There are two kinds of rock that you can see from Earth, even with the naked eye.

What you can see with the naked eye:
When you look up at the Moon you see a bright disk and dark splotches. The bright areas are the ancient crust leftover from the Moon's formation, and the dark areas are relatively newer rock that formed from lava that erupted from the interior. Those are the so-called seas.

What you can see with binoculars:
With binoculars, you'll start to see some of the surface features. In particular, you can see some of the Moon's largest craters. The craters tell you that the Moon was the victim of some cosmic target practice. You can see that the Moon was a pretty violent place when the planets were forming. Each one of those craters is the result of an impact that was so violent it dwarfs any atomic weapons we have on Earth.

What you can see with a telescope:
You can start to look the details of craters. Some of the big craters have walls that look terraced like a staircase, and this is because right after the crater was blasted out of the Moon's crust, the rock that formed the walls of the crater was fractured by the impact and slumped down, or collapsed, to form a series of stair steps.It's hard to tell how big these things are when you're looking through a telescope, but you can rest assured that these mountains are thousands of feet high. These are called central peaks, and they formed when the crust rebounded after the impact.

Try it out...Moon gazing is absolutely amazing....

Cherios

8:56 PM