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The
Moon (Luna)
The
@stro object for the week of 01/17/2000
image
(c) Roger Herzler
The Moon
(Luna). Earth's
moon, also known as Luna, has been the subject of investigation
and folklore since prehistoric times, and even direct exploration
in more recent times. It has an orbit on average of ~384,400km from
Earth, a diameter of 3476km, and it is the second brightest object
in our sky after the Sun. Many
theories on its origin have been expounded on. One of the currently
popular ones is that the Moon was created from debris that resulted
from a huge collision between Earth and another celestial body early
in Earth's history. The Moon was first visited by the Russian satellite
Luna 2 and is the only extraterrestrial body to be physically visited
by humans as well. It was common to call the part of the Moon that
faces away from us the "dark side of the Moon". This is
in fact incorrect. It isn't actually "dark" but because
the Moon's rotation closely approximates its 28 day orbit around
Earth, there are large parts of the Moon that are never seen from
Earth. Hence the name "dark side", even though it receives
sunlight just like the part we do see. On Thursday night, January
20, 2000 (07:01pm PST) there will be total lunar eclipse easily
visible from throughout North America. More
info on the eclipse...
| Total
Lunar Eclipse of January 20, 2000 |
| Event |
GMT |
PST |
| Partial
Eclipse Begins: |
03:01 AM* |
07:01 PM
|
| Total Eclipse
Begins: |
04:05 AM* |
08:05 PM |
| Mid-Eclipse:
|
04:44 AM* |
08:44 PM |
| Total Eclipse
Ends: |
05:22 AM* |
09:22 PM |
| Partial
Eclipse Ends: |
06:25 AM* |
10:25 PM |
|
* Event
occurs on morning of January 21, 2000
GST
- Greenwich Mean Time
EST - Eastern Standard Time
CST - Central Standard Time
MST - Mountain Standard Time
PST - Pacific Standard Time
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more
info...
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