The Moon

Here are some fascinating and some not so fascinating facts about the Earth's Moon

Black and white image of astronaut on the moon

The Moon has a mass of 7.3 x 10²² kg. (81 times less than the Earth's)
Its diameter is 3,476 kilometers (2,138 miles). That's less than the distance across the United States!
One lunar day is 655 hours long.
If you weigh 80 pounds, you would weigh only 13 pounds on the moon.
Most of the craters on the Moon result from meteorite impacts.
The moon has no water on its surface.
The moon has no atmosphere or clouds.
Its surface is scarred from hundreds and thousands of meteors that have struck it over billions of years.
Moon soil is called regolith.
The upper few hundred meeters of the Moon's surface is believed to be rubble that was generated by eons of meteor bombardment.
There are no active volcanoes on the moon.
"Moonquakes" are millions of times less powerful than earthquakes.
From Earth, we always see the same side of the moon.
There are two high tides and two low tides every day on every beach on Earth, because of the moon's pull.
The moon is the only body in the solar system that humans have visited. (Besides the Earth of course.)
Only 12 people have every walked on the surface of the moon.
People have not gone to the moon since 1972.
The moon would be a good place to set up a scientific base.
People are studying how to extract Oxygen from Moon dirt.
People are studying how to build solar collectors on the Moon to help provide the Earth with electricity.
The Moon is featured in many science fiction books
People have writen handbooks describing what it would be like to visit the Moon.
From 1972 to 1996 only two spacecraft visited the moon, Clementine and Hiten.
Only three countries have visited the moon.
There have been 71 missions to the Moon.
When I did an Excite netsearch on the Moon over 262,000 references were found.
People devote their entire careers to studing the Moon's gravity field.
Between 1997 and the end of 2000 there will be 8 Lunar Eclipses that are viewable from the western United Stats.
At least one company is planning a private lunar mission.
The Clementine spacecraft discovered evidence of ice at the Moon's south pole.
Some people believe that moonlight causes insanity. "Don't stare at the moon. You'll go crazy."
The word "lunatic" comes from when doctors thought that the insane were "moonstruck."
Some people believe that moon light can harm unborn children.
A "mooncalf" is someone who has been crazy since birth.
Nurses, police, and teaches sometimes claim than people act crazy at the full moon.
The ancient Chinese greeted solar eclipses by using noisemakers and by shooting arrows towrd the heavens.
The Moon is 384,400 km from the Earth.
The Moon's orbit is inclined 5^o from the Earth's ecliptic.
The face of the Moon is marked by regions, called mare, Latin for "sea".
The Moon's magnetic field is 100 to 1000 times weaker than the Earth's