The Almost Moon

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Further information: List of craters on the Moon A view of a three kilometer deep larger crater Daedalus on the Moon's far side

The Almost Moon: A Novel - Alice Sebold - Google Books

Following formation, the Moon has cooled and most of its atmosphere has been stripped. [61] The lunar surface has since been shaped by large impact events and many small ones, forming a landscape featuring craters of all ages. A woman steps over the line into the unthinkable in this brilliant, powerful and unforgettable novel by the author of The Lovely Bones. The Moon is a differentiated body that was initially in hydrostatic equilibrium but has since departed from this condition. [69] It has a geochemically distinct crust, mantle, and core. The Moon has a solid iron-rich inner core with a radius possibly as small as 240 kilometres (150mi) and a fluid outer core primarily made of liquid iron with a radius of roughly 300 kilometres (190mi). Around the core is a partially molten boundary layer with a radius of about 500 kilometres (310mi). [70] [71] This structure is thought to have developed through the fractional crystallization of a global magma ocean shortly after the Moon's formation 4.5billion years ago. [72] Due to tidal acceleration, the Moon's orbit around Earth has become significantly larger, with a longer period. [60]On Earth, our view of the illuminated part of the Moon changes each night, depending on where the Moon is in its orbit, or path, around Earth. When we have a full view of the completely illuminated side of the Moon, that phase is known as a full moon.

The Almost Moon - Alice Sebold - Google Books The Almost Moon - Alice Sebold - Google Books

The Moon is orbiting Earth at an average distance of 384,400 kilometres, meaning it would take over 17 days non-stop to fly there on a commercial plane. If you chose to go into someone else's reality, you had to be willing to walk. There were no shortcuts.” The Moon is, beside when passing through Earth's shadow during a lunar eclipse, always illuminated by the Sun, but from Earth the visible illumination shifts during its orbit, producing the lunar phases. [19] The Moon is the brightest celestial object in Earth's night sky. This is mainly due to its large angular diameter, while the reflectance of the lunar surface is comparable to that of asphalt. The apparent size is nearly the same as that of the Sun, allowing it to cover the Sun almost completely during a total solar eclipse. From Earth about 59% of the lunar surface is visible over time due to cyclical shifts in perspective ( libration), making parts of the far side of the Moon visible. Create a list of articles to read later. You will be able to access your list from any article in Discover. The Moon does not produce its own light. There is only one source of light in our solar system, and that is the Sun. Without the Sun, our Moon would be completely dark. What you may have heard referred to as “moonlight” is actually just sunlight reflecting off of the Moon’s surface.Its orbit is not perfectly circular, but varies between 252,000 and 225,600 kilometres away. We tend to think it is closer than it actually is simply because it is the largest celestial object in the sky. Is the Moon getting closer? While the giant-impact theory explains many lines of evidence, some questions are still unresolved, most of which involve the Moon's composition. [56] Models that have the Moon acquiring a significant amount of the proto-earth are more difficult to reconcile with geochemical data for the isotopes of zirconium, oxygen, silicon, and other elements. [57] Above a high resolution threshold for simulations, [ clarify] a study published in 2022 finds that giant impacts can immediately place a satellite with similar mass and iron content to the Moon into orbit far outside Earth's Roche limit. Even satellites that initially pass within the Roche limit can reliably and predictably survive, by being partially stripped and then torqued onto wider, stable orbits. [58] Natural development Artist's depiction of the Moon as it might have appeared in Earth's sky after the Late Heavy Bombardment around 4 billion years ago, when its orbit was half as close to Earth and it appeared 2.8 times larger than today. [59] The Moon is in geophysical terms a planetary-mass object or satellite planet. It has a mass that amounts to 1.2% of Earth's, and a diameter that is roughly one-quarter of Earth's or with 3,474km (2,159mi) about as wide as Australia. [17] Within the Solar System it is the most massive and largest satellite in relation to its parent planet, the fifth most massive and largest moon overall, and more massive and larger than all known dwarf planets. [18] Its surface gravity is about one sixth of Earth's, about half of that of Mars, and after Jupiter's moon Io the second highest among all Solar System moons. The body of the Moon is differentiated and terrestrial, with no significant hydrosphere, atmosphere, or magnetic field. It formed 4.51billion years ago, not long after Earth's formation, out of the debris from a giant impact between Earth and a hypothesized Mars-sized body called Theia. The prevailing theory is that the Earth–Moon system formed after a giant impact of a Mars-sized body (named Theia) with the proto-Earth. The oblique impact blasted material into orbit about the Earth and the material accreted and formed the Moon [44] [45] just beyond the Earth's Roche limit of ~ 2.56 R 🜨. [46] Main articles: Orbit of the Moon and Lunar theory A view of the rotating Earth and the far side of the Moon as the Moon passes on its orbit in between the observing DSCOVR satellite and Earth

The Moon | Natural History Museum The Moon | Natural History Museum

The Moon reflects light from the Sun and that is why we can see it. It is not a source of light but acts like a mirror. The Moon displays these eight phases one after the other as it moves through its cycle each month. It takes about 27.3 days for the Moon to orbit Earth. However, because of how sunlight hits the Moon, it takes about 29.5 days to go from one new moon to the next new moon. PW: Your memoir focused on rape—your brutal rape when you were a student at Syracuse University in 1981. Your novel, The Lovely Bones, is about a rape and murder. Was it a Continue reading »Isotope dating of lunar samples suggests the Moon formed around 50million years after the origin of the Solar System. [37] [38] Historically, several formation mechanisms have been proposed, [39] but none satisfactorily explains the features of the Earth–Moon system. A fission of the Moon from Earth's crust through centrifugal force [40] would require too great an initial rotation rate of Earth. [41] Gravitational capture of a pre-formed Moon [42] depends on an unfeasibly extended atmosphere of Earth to dissipate the energy of the passing Moon. [41] A co-formation of Earth and the Moon together in the primordial accretion disk does not explain the depletion of metals in the Moon. [41] None of these hypotheses can account for the high angular momentum of the Earth–Moon system. [43] The distance between the Moon and Earth varies from around 356,400km (221,500mi) ( perigee) to 406,700km (252,700mi) (apogee), making the Moon's apparent size fluctuate. On average the Moon's angular diameter is about 0.52°, roughly the same apparent size as the Sun (see §Eclipses). In addition, a purely psychological effect, known as the Moon illusion, makes the Moon appear larger when close to the horizon. [185]