10 Things You Didn’t Know About The Moon

1. We only ever see the same half of the Moon from Earth.

The reason why we only ever see one face of the Moon is because the Moon rotates around on its own axis in exactly the same amount of time it takes to orbit the Earth. This means that the same side is always facing the Earth.

2. The actual dark side of the Moon is the far side we never see from Earth.

When travelling around the dark side of the Moon, Apollo 10 astronauts Eugene Cernan and John Young, reported hearing strange noises. You can listen to them for yourself here: http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/21/world/far-side-Moon-music/.

3. There are rules for how the Moon’s craters are named.

Today, the International Astronomical Union comprises individuals who choose names for craters on the Moon, along with all the other astronomical objects. Generally speaking, there are two groups of names for Moon craters. The ones that surround the Apollo crater and the Mare Moscoviense (a well-known lunar mare that sits on the far side of the Moon) are to be named after deceased American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts.

4. The Moon has its own time zone.

Lunar Time (LT) encompasses local lunar time zones, similar to the standard time zones of Earth. A lunar hour is known as a ‘lunour’, a term developed by Hayden Planetarium’s former chief astronomer Kenneth L. Franklin. Franklin developed LT, or what he referred to as ‘lunar mean solar time’.

5. The Moon has quakes, similar to how the Earth has earthquakes.

These are caused by the gravitational pull of the Earth. Lunar astronauts used seismographs (an instrument used to detect seismic waves) on their visits to the Moon, and found ruptures and cracks, realizing that small Moonquakes occurred several kilometers beneath the surface.

6. There are trees from the Moon planted on Earth.

More accurately speaking, in 1971, Apollo 14 astronaut Stuart Roosa took a handful of tree seeds with him into orbit and scattered them into space from the surface of the Moon. Later, the seeds were germinated on Earth.

7. The first spacecraft to reach the Moon was Luna 1 in 1959. Luna 1 was a Soviet craft, launched from the USSR. It passed within just under 6000 km of the surface of the Moon before going into orbit around the Sun.

8. The Moon is not the only thing that’s orbiting the Earth.

Discovered in 1999, the asteroid, Cruithne, measures 5 kilometers across. Cruithne orbits our planet in a horseshoe shape, taking roughly 770 years to make a complete orbit.

9. Despite its appearance in the night sky, the Moon is not round.

Instead it is slightly egg-shaped with the end pointing towards the Earth, making it seem round from our viewpoint.

10. The Moon is drifting away from the Earth.

Every year, the Moon drifts approximately 3.8 centimeters away from the Earth. Scientists estimate that this will continue to happen for the next 50 billion years or so.

Fact sources:

http://www.space.com/11162-10-surprising-moon-facts-full-moons.html

http://www.moonconnection.com/moon_facts.phtml

http://www.space.com/19619-top-10-moon-facts.html

http://space-facts.com/the-moon/