Astronomy Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Astronomy - Research Paper ExampleThe laze allows and sustains life on Earth, affects its tides fooling and though not a mystery to the same degree as it had been byout all of history, it continues to gibe the imagination and much remains to be learned of Earths closest celestial neighbor. Today, throng more or less(prenominal) look upon the moon as eye candy and pay smaller attention to its cycles. This was not the case for our ancestors who care risey monitored its movements. Several calendars of ancient civilizations were based on the cycles of the moon and well-nigh are currently such as the Islamic calendar. The date of the Chinese New Year is delimitate by the cycle of the moon. The Sun was used by man until relatively recently to measure short-change intervals of time but the moon was judged more reliable for longer time measurements. What is commonly known as a month is based on the 29-day cycle of the moon. The term month is derived from the term moonth. Without th e moons cycle we might have ended up with a very different way of retentivity track of time, and we most probably would have called it something other than a month (Miles & Peters, 2001). The Christian celebration of easter is calculated by determining the first Sunday following the first occurrence of a full moon subsequent to the beginning of the Spring Equinox. The reason for this is that Christians had traditionally used the light of the full moon to aid in their pilgrimage to their holy lands for Easter. Though the moon is the closest object to Earth and has been explored by man, questions remain regarding its exact origins and whether or not life ever existed on or within it or if it could sustain life. It was discovered more than a century ago that the moons density is less then Earths. Galileo noticed craters on the moons fold up through the use of the orbit in the 1600s. Currently, more is known about the moon than any other celestial body, knowledge that was unsuffera ble until recent times (Hamilton, 2005). Prior to the common use of telescopes, when the moon was viewed unaided, all that could be discerned were two unequivocal kinds of topography, dark and bright areas configured in a way that produced the illusion of the Man in the Moon. This figment was likely known as just that to most persons of the world but before recent times it was not known that the dark areas were produced by the violent impacts of asteroids hitting the moon many hundreds of million eld ago. These primordial impacts on the lunar surface played a large part in reshaping the moons appearance and could explain why there are two large protrusions on the surface of the moon. New analysis reveals that shock waves from some of the moons early asteroid impacts traveled through the lunar inner(a), triggering volcanic eruptions on the moons opposite side. Molten magma spewed out from the deep interior and flooded the lunar landscape (Than, 2006). The cooled magma created th e familiar dark areas which are termed lunar seas. These dark areas unite to take a hop the face of the moon. The Man in the Moons eyes have been labeled female horse Imbrium and Mare Serenitatis. The nose, Sinus Aestuum and the mouth, which appears to be smiling, is a combination of the Mare Cognitum and Mare Nubium (Heiken et al, 1991). The Earths sky appears to be blue because its atmosphere diffracts light in such a way that produces this