Earth's permanent natural satellite: The moon

I've often find myself looking at the moon and admiring it's...celestialness; Not an uncommon thing right? The moon is the most visible of celestial objects from Earth, and for a long, long, long time it's been one of the most fascinating things to humans: For millennia! As a young kid who loved sci-fi I had thought we'd be living on it by now and yet to my great disappointment we are not. We're still learning about it though, and there's plans to live on it too!

The moon lies somewhere between 362,570 kilometres and 405,410 kilometres away from Earth depending on the orbit and I was interested to read is actually moving away from the Earth at the rate of about 4 centimetres each year. I don't think that's something we need to concern ourselves with at this point; It's not moving away that fast, possibly because it weighs 74 billion trillion kilograms. Yeah, a bit of a heavyweight huh? I'm a bit of a fan of the moon; I mean it's not like it really does anything I suppose but it's big and close to Earth and looks amazing some nights popping up over the foothills at the front of my house. If I was any sort of photographer I'd grab a snap of it, alas, I'm not. I thought I'd share a few moon facts with you though.

• The moon was formed 4.6 billion years ago
• The same side of the moon faces the Earth all the time
• The soviets landed the first unmanned mission to the moon in 1959
• Apollo 11 was the first manned mission in 1969
• Diameter 3475 kilometres
• Orbit period is 27 days
• Surface temperature -133 to 123 degrees C (huge temperature swings due to lack of atmosphere)
• The moon has been walked on by 12 people, all male, all Americans
• People way about 16% less on the moon due to the lesser gravity than the Earth
• There is no atmosphere. From the moon the sky always looks black for this reason
• Effects the tides on Earth
• Due to the lack of atmosphere no sound can be heard on the moon
• NASA has plans for man to walk on the moon again, possibly as soon as 2019, with the creation of a permanent space station. (If all goes to plan)

There are some who subscribe to various myths about the moon; You know the ones, werewolves turn on a full moon or people in inane asylums go crazy(er) on full moons and many people swear that they have difficulty sleeping on full moons also. I'm not sure about any of them however what I do know is that the moon has been the most enduring and interesting sources of wonder for humans for well, since we existed I guess.

[- Design and create your ideal life, don’t live it by default - @galenkp -]

Photo of Arc de Triomphe was taken by me. The moon wasn't in the original shot, it's been added by me for this post. (As if you can't tell)