NASA & Astronomy Ireland Observe The Moon Night
KCLR FM David Moore talks about NASA International Observe the Moon night. Listen
To celebrate NASA’s billion dollar Moon missions LRO and LCROSS that discovered so much about the Moon in October 2010 a Moon Watch has been organised annually since then and now has over 800 events worldwide as part of NASA’s “International Observe the Moon Night”
This year, due to Covid-19 restrictions Astronomy Ireland are encouraging everyone in the country to get out, even at their own home and using the naked eye or low cost binoculars observe the Moon, on this ‘International Observe the Moon Night’ on October 16th, the Moon can be seen all night from sunset at 6:30pm until after midnight..
“The Moon is full of details to see like craters, mountains, vast lava lakes and more. It is by the far the most spectacular object to see in a telescope. It is great be joining forces with NASA focus on the Moon for one night a year, even if we cannot do it together!” said David Moore, editor of Astronomy Ireland magazine.
We are encouraging everyone to take a picture, even with your smartphone and send it to magazine@astronomy.ie for publication in our magazine.
MOON FACTS
The Moon is roughly 3,500 km across (2,160 miles) wide and roughly 400,000 km (240,000 miles) from Earth.
It is thought the Moon was made when another planet half the size of Earth crashed into the Earth and a huge cloud of molten rock was flung out into space around the Earth and formed the Moon. This happened shortly after the Earth was formed 4,500 million years ago.
Since then rocks in space have smashed into the Moon leaving the countless ‘craters’ that can be seen peppering its surface with a telescope.
The Moon goes around the Earth roughly once every “moonth” – this is where the word “month” came from i.e. we used to base our calendar on the 12 Full Moons we get each year. Neil Armstrong was Irish. He told our Editor David Moore at a private meeting in Dublin in 2003 when Armstrong said he had just researched his family history.