Moon Madness

Kari over at Down & Out In Arkansas commented she was kinda cranky today like me. So, I thought I'd check the moon phase and see if a Full Moon was upon us. Nope! It is not. The last full moon was May 13th, 2006 and the next one is June 11th, 2006. So, I cant blame my crabbiness on the moon phase. Maybe its PMS, but I dont think so. Maybe I need a vacation from my family.....I bet that is the answer!

Anyhow, I have always liked the moon. It is my favorite in our solar system which has only 9 planets but it has over 137 moons. So, I thought some moon trivia would be fun.

• The moon is 4.5 billion years old
• It has a mass of 73'490'000'000'000'000 million kg and is egg shaped
• It is 23,8896 miles from Earth
• To travel around the moon would take 4 days by car. To get to the moon from earth: 130 days by car...13 hours by rocket
• The same side of the Moon always faces the Earth
• Due to a loss of orbital energy to gravity from the Earth, the Moon is very gradually moving away from the Earth. In the early history of the Earth, the Moon looked about 3X larger in size in the sky, because it was closer to the Earth
• The Moon's surface is about the same now as it was 3 billion years ago. The astronauts' footprints remain unchanged on the Moon's surface
• The moon causes many of the tides in the Earth's oceans. This is because of the gravity force between the Earth and Moon. At full Moon and new Moon, the Sun, Earth and Moon are lined up, producing the higher than normal tides (called spring tides, for the way they spring up). When the Moon is at first or last quarter, smaller neap tides form
• The moon is not made of cheese and I have no idea what it consists of!

When I was a kid, I can remember at night just staring at the moon and wishing I could see a martian man or something. My cousins and I were always star-gazing and my Uncle J. knew the constellations and would show them to us. I wish I had paid better attention to them so now I would be able to show my kids. I ve shown them the big/little dippers but thats about all I remember. We have a decent working telescope that my hubby bought for son #1 a few years ago. When Venus and the last comet showers were easy to see, we got up in the middle of the night and took a look at them. It was pretty neat.