Earth, Sun and Moon Notes

MOON

•           Moon is made up of rocks and has no air on it.

•           Moon is the natural satellite of the Earth.

•           Its distance from the Earth is 3,84,400 km.

•           Moon does not have any light of its own.

•           The moonlight we see is only reflected sunlight.

SURFACE OF THE MOON

•         As we observe the moon with naked eye, we will probably notice that some areas are darker than others.

•         This is because; long ago there were many comets and asteroids, which frequently hit the worlds of our Solar System.

•         Every once in a while, a very large object would crash into the Moon hard enough to break through its surface rock causing lava to ooze out.

Figure 16: Moon

•         The lighter areas on the surface of the moon are where objects have crashed into the surface recently.

•         In photographs of the Moon, we can see large scars called craters.

PHASES OF THE MOON

•         The moon does not have its own light.

•         The sun lights it up.

•         The moon circles the Earth, which causes the shape of the lit portion to change.

•         So we see different parts of the moon while it orbits around the Earth.

•         These changing shapes are called phases of the moon.

•         Some days we can hardly see the moon because the side lit up is away from the Earth. This is called a New Moon.

•         It then appears as a thin Crescent, and goes on to become a Half Moon.