Related papers: Micro moon versus macro moon: Brightness and size
Ptolemy's model of the Moon's motion implied that its distance varies by nearly a factor of two, implying that its angular size should also vary by nearly a factor of two. We present an analysis of 100 naked eye observations of the Moon's…
The Earth-Moon system is unusual in several respects. The Moon is roughly 1/4 the radius of the Earth - a larger satellite-to-planet size ratio than all known satellites other than Pluto's Charon. The Moon has a tiny core, perhaps with only…
We present another explanation for the moon illusion, the phenomenon in which the moon looks larger near the horizon than near the zenith. In our model of the moon illusion, the sky is considered a spatially-contiguous and…
Prior to the invention of the telescope many astronomers worked out theories of the motion of the Moon. The purpose of such theories was to be able to predict the position of the Moon in the sky. These geometrical models implied a certain…
The Moon often appears larger near the perceptual horizon and smaller high in the sky though the visual angle subtended is invariant. We show how this illusion results from the optimization of a projective geometrical frame for conscious…
The intense activity of cratering on the Moon and in the inner regions of the solar system was accomplished during the first 10^9 years [1]. Occasionally, some impact events occur even nowadays. In Section 1, we treat, from a historical…
Cosmic rays bombard the lunar surface producing mesons, which attenuate inside the regolith. They get slower and decay weakly into mostly sub-GeV neutrinos leaving the surface. Thus the Moon shines in neutrinos. Here we calculate spectra of…
A model based on celestial geometry and atmospheric physics predicts the dimming and the color of lunar eclipses. Corresponding visual magnitudes and color indices for eclipses from year 2000 through 2050 are listed. The enlargement of the…
Earth is unusual in bearing life, and in having a large moon. A number of authors have suggested a possible connection between the two, e.g. through lunar stabilisation of the earth's obliquity, or through the effects of the oceanic tides.…
The leading theory for the origin of the Moon is the giant impact hypothesis, in which the Moon was formed out of the debris left over from the collision of a Mars-sized body with the Earth. Soon after its formation, the orbit of the Moon…
Earthshine is the dominant source of natural illumination on the surface of the Moon during lunar night, and at locations within permanently shadowed regions that never receive direct sunlight. As such, earthshine may enable the exploration…
Lunar occultation can be used to measure the proper motions of some of the long time scale microlensing events, $t_{e} \gsim 70$ days, now being detected toward the Galactic bulge. The long events are difficult to explain within the context…
When the Moon was formed it was much closer to the Earth than it is today. It just needed about 20 days then to go around the Earth. Now it takes the Moon 29.5 days to make one revolution. In order to follow the conservation of angular…
The illumination phase functions for Starlink Mini satellites are determined for times of twilight and darkness. Those functions are then evaluated to give apparent magnitudes over a grid of points across the sky and over a range of solar…
The role of the moon in triggering earthquakes has been studied since the early 1900s. Theory states that as land tides swept by the moon cross fault lines, stress in the Earth's plates intensifies, increasing the likelihood of small…
Three principal concepts regarding lunar formation have been examined: the accretion hypothesis, the mega-impact theory, and the multi-impact model. The multi-impact model amalgamates the salient facets of the mega-impact theory and the…
This paper shows how the exposure of the Moon to the Earth's plasmasheet is subject to decadal variations due to lunar precession. The latter is a key property of the Moon's apparent orbit around the Earth - the nodes of that orbit precess…
The variation of the solar diameter is the subject of hot debates due to the possible effect on Earth climate and also due to different interpretations of long period solar variabilities, including the total solar irradiance. We shortly…
The uniform image of the full moon is well known from the beginning of history. In the last decades, there are photos with a similar configuration of the earth observed from the moon and from space, as well as of all the planets and their…
Following a technique of Galileo we compute the height on a mountain on the Moon. It is based on a simple observation that precisely on a half Moon day, the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun form the vertices of a right triangle with the Moon at…