Category Archives: Moon

Moon

Observe the Moon

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You Can’t Miss It!

The Moon, as seen from the International Space Station. Courtesy NASA.

Do you like to look at the Moon?  It’s a great object to study — whether with the naked eye or binoculars, or with a telescope (if you have one).  On September 18 (this Saturday), all the Moon gazers around the world will join together to celebrate the first of what they hope will be many “International Observe the Moon Nights“.

The Moon is so close, yet so far away from us.  It takes about  1.3 seconds to send a light beam between Earth and the Moon. If you wanted to travel there, it would take more than a day (and more likely a couple of days at the least). And, once you got there, you’d have to live in a space suit, bring along your own food and water, and — if you wanted to build a home there — you’d have to live underground for your own safety.  The lunar surface is covered with craters and coated with dust. It’s not very hospitable at all — but, humans have wanted to travel there. And, in the 1960s and 1970s, humans DID go to the Moon.  We aren’t back there yet, but hopefully someday we will be.  It’s a worthy goal for any traveler. For now, though, we can observe it easily from our backyards.  Hence, the celebration of International Observe the Moon Night.

The best part about the celebration is that you don’t have to be an experienced skygazer.  It’s for anybody — from the general public to amateur astronomers to professionals — to gaze at the Moon.  Check out the festivities at the link above — where you’ll find a history of the event and some forms to fill out if you participate.  I can’t think of a better way to spend a September evening! Can you?

apollo 11, Moon, moon missions

The Eagle Once Landed

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Geeking Out 41 Years Ago

The mission patch for Apollo 11. Courtesy NASA.

So, I know where I was 41 years ago this week: glued to the TV watching the Apollo 11 landings and first humans walking on the Moon.  It was a special time — a time when I honestly thought that maybe by the time I got out of high school or even college, that people would be regularly traveling to the Moon for vacations, commerce, exploration, and maybe even to live.

It’s a promise that humans have been unable to fulfill for a number of good and bad reasons. But, for me, the wonder of those days is still there.  I still get a little wistful when I see the pictures and videos and think about how we all were so excited in those times.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin sets out an experiment during the Apollo 11 mission. Courtesy NASA.

They were part of America’s great leap to space, and in most ways, our country has done a LOT of exploration. We have robot probes that have explored (and some still are exploring) the planets. We’ve learned to study our OWN planet, as pictures from NASA and NOAA and other space agencies attest.   But, we’ve never returned people to the Moon, and that’s disappointing.

Still, the dream is alive and the pictures remind us of what can be. It may be that people other than Americans will be the next to step on the Moon — just as people from other countries have taken up the cause of space exploration and made it part of their national outreach and honor, too.  That’s not a bad thing — space is becoming an international endeavor. I’m happy that we were the first to go to the Moon. I just hope we’re not the last.