An Essay about: The Moon

The Moon; the second brightest object in the sky and one of the most mysterious. It was believed that the moon was created long ago when a planet, nearly the size of Mars crashed into the earth. It was believed that this 'planet' as it was so called, shattered to pieces as it was destroyed when it impacted with earth. At the same time it was assumed that the crust covering the earth was also destroyed. The debris that had come from the destroyed planet slowly began to come together, forming the moon as it is today.
It has an outer layer of hard crust of about sixty kilometers. The core of the moon is partly liquid. The surface layers of the moon are covered with craters. They were formed by the rough collision and impact of meterorites. The volcanic explosions from the meterorites caused there to large craters in the surface.

Most of the craters were made three hundred to four hundred million years ago. It's been measured that the largest craters tend to be around two hundred kilometers in diameter, where as the smaller ones are only around a meter if even that.
Just recently in one of the craters, ice was found on the south pole. It's possible that more could be discovered in time.
Another interesting discovery is the different number of moon rocks found such as granite, pyroxinite, norite, green glass, tractolite, and denite. And certainly there are more waiting to be discovered as we advance with our technology and hone our skills of spacemaking, we will probably discover more.

The moon goes through something called an eclipse. What this is, is when the moon and earth fall into line with eachother and in line with the sun at the same time.
There are two types of eclipses.
The first is the ever popular lunar eclipse. This is where the Earth moves in between the sun and the moon and blocks all light from the sun from reaching the moon. The moon is covered in a dark shadow, and it can only go through a lunar eclipse when it is full.
The second eclipse is called a solar eclipse. This happens only when there is a new moon and the moon goes between the Sun and Earth.
At this point, the moon blocks out the sun's light from part of the earth's surface and this creates the solar eclipse. Sometimes, an Annular Eclipse is made from this. An Annular eclipse is when the dark moon is surrounded by a bright ring of sunlight.
The moon holds mystery and keeps us in awe of its presence in the sky. Perhaps someday, we will unlock more of its secrets.


http://www.moonlightsys.com/themoon/facts.html
http://www.solarviews.com/eng/moon.htm
http://home.hiwaay.net/~krcool/Astro/moon/