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

Astronomy - Research Paper ExampleThe dream allows and sustains life on Earth, affects its tides daily and though not a enigma to the same degree as it had been throughout all of history, it continues to inspire the imagination and much remains to be learned of Earths closest heavenly neighbor. Today, people more than or less look upon the moon on as eye candy and pay little attention to its cycles. This was not the case for our ancestors who carefully monitored its movements. Several calendars of ancient civilizations were based on the cycles of the moon and some are currently such as the Islamic calendar. The date of the Chinese New category is set by the cycle of the moon. The Sun was used by man until relatively late(a)ly to measure short 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 the moons cycle we m ight present ended up with a very different way of keeping 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 sanctified 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 at bottom 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 push through through the use of the telescope in the 1600s. Currently, more is known about the moon than any other celestial body, noesis that was inconceivable 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 distinct kinds of topography, dark and bright areas configured in a way that produced the illusion of the Man in the Moon. This myth 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 years 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 interior, 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 the familiar d ark areas which are termed lunar seas. These dark areas plug in to form the face of the moon. The Man in the Moons eyes have been labeled Mare Imbrium and Mare Serenitatis. The nose, Sinus Aestuum and the mouth, which appears to be smiling, is a cabal 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