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The Moon is in a nearly circular orbit around the Earth. It is 384,000 km from the Earth and it takes 29 days to complete one orbit. The same side always faces the Earth; this means that a lunar "day" lasts 29 Earth days (14 ½ days of light and 14½ days of dark). There is no water on the Moon and no atmosphere.
Studies of the 380 kg of rock that have been brought back from the Moon shows that it is about the same age as the Earth and is made of similar rock to those found just under the Earth's crust. The Moon was probably formed after the collision of a giant meteorite with the Earth; it probably hit a site under the Pacific Ocean with enough energy to blast a huge chunk of the Earth into space.
The surface of the Moon has obvious marias ("seas"), mountains and craters and less obvious rays. Some of these features are huge compared to the Moon's radius of 1,750 km.
The Maria Imbrium is 1,200 km across, the Apennine mountain range is 6,000m high and the rim walls of the highest craters up to 3,000 m high. There is no weathering on the Moon, so any feature remains for millions of years until the next meteor collision superimposes another crater.
The "seas" could be the result of collisions of comets, asteroids or large meteors with the Moon. The object that created the Maria Imbrium must have been 60 km in radius. Coming in a flat angle, it had enough energy to melt the rocks then the shock wave created the wave like surrounding edges and raised the nearby mountain ranges.
The chains of mountains are usually named after mountain ranges on Earth. Their heights can be measured by the lengths of the shadows they cast.
Many of the Moon's craters have central peaks; they occur randomly all over the Moon, though there are many more on the far side (where there are no "seas"). The largest craters are 100 km across, so big that even rims rising 3,000 km high cannot be seen from the middle.
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PUPIL WORKSHEET - Features of the Moon
1. a. Obtain a map of the moon and label the major features on the Moon map using the data in the table below.
Name of Nature of Diameter Height Co-ordinates Co-ordinates
feature feature (km) (m) (NS degrees) (EW degrees)
Crisium Maria 440x550 16N 59E
Gauss Crater 160 39N 60E
Caucasus Mountains 4,000 37N 10E
Aristarchus Crater 46 2,000 23E 48W
Humorum Maria 24S 40W
Archimedes Crater 30N 5W
Pyrenees Mountains 4,000 10S 40E
Imbrium Maria 35N 20W
Leibnitz Mountains 90S 0E
Maginus Crater 180 58S 15W
Tranquillitatis Maria 7N 30E
Endymion Crater 125 5,000 54N 57E
Alps Mountains 4,000 48N 2W
Theophilus Crater 100 6,000 12S 27E
Fecunditatis Maria 0S 50E
Eratosthenes Crater 60 5,300 14N 11W
Ptolemaeus Crater 145 3,000 10S 2W
Serenitatis Maria 30N 20E
Carpathian Mountains 2,300 14N 25W
Herodotus Crater 40 1,300 23N 50W
Apennines Mountains 6,200 17N 5W
Frigoris Maria 55N 20E
Fraunhofer Crater 1,700 40S 60E
Pitiscus Crater 3,300 50S 31E
2. Imagine the scale of the map of the Moon is such that 300 km are represented by 10 degrees. Use the map to estimate the diameter of:-
a. Maria Humorum
b. Archimedes crater
c. Maria Imbrium
d. Pitiscus crater
e. Maria Serenitatis
f. Fraunhofer crater
g. Maria Frigoris
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