Our Moon Essay

527 Words3 Pages
Our moon Every night we can look up to the sky and see a beautiful celestial body, with a shining bright light on a clear starry night. In this work I’m going to talk about our moon, a beautiful gift from God, to brighten our nights. The Moon is the only natural satellite of the Earth and the fifth largest moon in the Solar System. The moon doesn't produce its own light, but looks bright because it reflects light from the Sun. It is the second brightest object in the sky after the sun. The gravitational forces between the Earth and the moon cause some interesting effects; tides are the most obvious. It is the only celestial body other than Earth on which humans have set foot. The first man to make proper maps of the moon was Galileo. The first person to walk on the Moon was the American astronaut, Neil Armstrong, who stepped out of his space landing craft, the Eagle, on 21 July 1969 with these famous words, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. The Moon is much smaller than the Earth, with a diameter of 3,476 kilometers. It is airless, waterless and lifeless. The moon’s surface is covered in craters, pits and scars. It shows the damage caused by large pieces of rock hitting it billions of years ago. From the Earth we can only see one side of the Moon; the other side is always turned away from us. If you look at the Moon when it is nearly full you can see the dark areas which are known as the seas. (They are all given names, such as Mare Serenitatis – the Sea of Serenity, or Mare Frigoris – the Sea of Cold).These are not really seas but are huge expanses of smooth dark lava. All parts of the Moon are lit in turn by the Sun. As it rotates round the Earth we see different fractions of the Moon. These are known as the phases of the Moon, or lunar phases. The Moon changes from a thin crescent to a full moon and back again to a

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