Moon is a natural satellite of earth. Human beings are living on the planet earth. Earth is a rocky and largest planet of four inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars). The shape of planet earth is oblate spheroid, that means spherical in shape. Earth takes 365 and quarter days to complete one rotation of the sun. The radius of our planet earth is 3,959 miles (6,371 kilometres), and the weight of our planet is 5.97 billion trillion metric tons.
Rotation speed of the Earth
The surface of the earth at the equator rotates at a speed of 460 meters per second and approximately 1,000 miles per hour. Also, the earth revolves around our giant star sun at a speed of nearly 30 kilometres per second, approximately 67,000 miles per hour.
Few user’s have raised a doubt, why are you explaining about earth instead of the article title “Amazing facts and how it’s useful to the earth?”. Before we are going to know amazing facts, we should know some details about our living planet earth. Alright let’s see about it and its benefits.
Moon is a light source for the earth in the night time. It is formed with hard rock, and this acts as a natural satellite to the planet earth. Every night billions of people are seeing this natural satellite. Without it, the romantic poem is incomplete, because it is used to mention female character beauty and romantic situations.
Amazing Facts about Moon
People should know about the amazing facts:
- The word “moon” derives from the Old English expression “mōna,”
- Most scientists and space experts accept the explanation that the Moon was created when a rock the size of Mars slammed into Earth, shortly after the solar system began forming about 4.5 billion years ago.
- Earth’s natural satellite is the fifth largest satellite in our solar system and it is the second densest after the planet Jupiter’s moon Io.
- The natural satellite completes an orbit around Earth every 27.3 days but only shows the same phase to Earth in around 29.5 days.
- The gravity has slowed the speed of Earth’s rotation.
- The radius is 1,737.4 kilometres.
- The distance between the it and earth is 384,400 km.
- Earth is almost four times bigger than the size of a full moon from Earth.
- Not all full moons are the same size, because their size varies based on whether it is at its apogee (far away distance) or perigee (nearby distance). Commonly the moon is 14% bigger when at its perigee(nearby distance).
- The size is approximately the same as that of the Sun, making it possible to witness a total solar eclipse.
- The moon is 400 times closer to Earth, and it is 400 times smaller than the sun, so from Earth, the moon and the sun look about the same size.
- The earth’s rotation slows by about 1.5 milliseconds per century because of the gravitational force of the moon linked to the earth.
- It has very less gravity force compared to our planet earth; it has just one-sixth the gravity of Earth. This means that the astronauts’ suits that weighed 60 kg on Earth weighed only about 10 kg on it.
The related facts on Moon
- Every year it rises into higher orbit by about 3.8 centimetres or 1.5 inches.
- It has no power to reflect its own light, it only reflects the sunlight to our planet earth.
- The British astronomer Thomas Harriot (c. 1560-1621) is the first person to draw a map with a telescope.
- It has its own atmosphere – it is composed of helium, neon, and argon, and it is packed or crowded together ten trillion times less than that of Earth.
- The first nation to touch the moon was the Soviet Union space probe in the year 1959, Luna 2 reached the its surface with a hard landing. The first probe, Lune 1, failed to reach it with a distance of 3,000 miles (5,000 km).
- The Soviet Union Luna 9 is the first probe to reach the moon with a soft landing on the its surface. This mission success is showing positive results that a spacecraft landing was possible without sinking into the lunar surface. This Luna 9 gives hope to several astronauts to land on the its surface without facing any problem.
- India was the first country to discover water on the it’s south pole surface in the year 2008, through the mission Chandrayaan 1. Later several space agencies confirmed the statement of the India Space Agency called ISRO.
- A Total of four nations touched the lunar surface successfully. First is the Soviet Union, USA, China and India.
- In the year 2023, month of august 23 India is the first nation to successfully soft land its Vikram lander (Pragyan rover) on south pole through the mission chandrayaan 3. Before that, In the year Chandrayaan 2 soft landing mission failed with a distance of 2 km between moon and lander. Right now the Pragyan rover discovers oxygen, sulphur, iron and some other minerals on the lunar surface.
Health benefits
It is more useful than the earth in several ways. Human beings are getting so many health benefits to their body. They are.
- Traditional Ayurveda medicine world holds that moon-bathing (or moon gazing) has benefits for women’s health. It increases fertility and lead to more regular menstrual cycles. It helps to improve concentration and provides better sleep.
- The gravity makes the angle of earth rotate into 23.4 degrees. This angle helps to make a four season(winter, spring, summer and rainy ) on our planet earth.
- Tidal drag between the moon and Earth eventually would lead Earth to match the speed of the moon. However, before that would happen, the sun would have become a red giant, engulfing and incinerating Earth.
- The Moon has its own quakes, even though they’re weaker than those experienced on Earth. They are moonquakes and may last up to 30 minutes.
- If Earth were one big ocean, the tidal bulge would travel once around Earth in 24 hours and 50 minutes. That’s the time of one moonrise to the next.
- It wasn’t until 1665 that scientists realized that other moons orbited other planets. The official name then became a capitalized “Moon.”
- This was a Soviet craft, which was launched from the USSR. It passed within 5995 km of the surface before going into orbit around the Sun.
More astonishing facts
- The Moon’s time zone is Lunar Standard Time (LST). A year consists of 12 days named after the 12 astronauts that first set foot on the satellite.
- It is the fifth-largest natural satellite in the Solar System, and the largest among planetary satellites relative to the size of the planet that it orbits.
- From Earth, both the Sun and the Moon look about same size. This is because, it is 400 times smaller than the Sun, but also 400 times closer to Earth.
- Driving a car to the moon would take 130 days. A rocket would take 13 hours. Traveling by the speed of light would take 1.52 seconds.
- Aristotle and Pliny the Elder believed that a full moon affected the water in a human’s brain, causing insanity or irrational behavior.
- A June 2019 poll revealed that 6% of Americans believe the moon landing was staged, and 15%, said they don’t know if it was real or fake.
