Moon Trivia

When the Apollo 12 astronauts landed on the moon,
the impact caused the Moon's surface to vibrate for 55 minutes.

The temperature on the Moon reaches 243° F
at midday on the lunar equator.
During the night,
the temperature falls to -261° F.

The Sea of Tranquility is on the Moon.
It’s not a real sea, but a “maria,”
one of the regions on the Moon
that appear dark when looking at it.

The U.S.S.R. captured the first photo of the moon
taken from space in 1959.
The image was of the dark side of the moon.

The surface speed record on the Moon is 10.56 miles per hour.
It was set in an Apollo lunar rover.

The size of the first footprint on the Moon was 13 by 6 inches,
the dimensions of Neil Armstrong's boot
when he took his historic walk on July 20, 1969.

Gene Cernan was the last man to step on the moon in 1972.

The dark spots on the moon that create the benevolent
"man in the moon"
image are actually basins filled 3 to 8 kilometers deep
with basalt, a dense mineral,
which causes immense gravitation variations.

The final resting place for Dr. Eugene Shoemaker–the Moon.
The famed U.S. Geological Survey astronomer
had trained the Apollo mission astronauts about craters,
but never made it into space.
Dr. Shoemaker had wanted to be an astronaut
but was rejected because of a medical problem.
His ashes were placed on board the Lunar Prospector spacecraft
before it was launched on January 6, 1998.
NASA crashed the probe into a crater on the moon
on July 31, 1999, in an attempt to learn
if there is water on the Moon.

Contrary to popular belief,
the Moon does have an atmosphere.
It is very thin.
If you took all of the molecules
in one cubic centimeter of atmosphere
from the Moon and lined them up,
they would fit inside the period of this sentence.
If you took a cubic centimeter of atmosphere
from the earth at sea level
and lined all of the molecules up,
it would go from the earth to the Moon
and back again two and a half times.

The first spacecraft to send back pictures
of the far side of the Moon was Luna 3 in October 1959.
The photographs covered about 70 percent of the far side.

The first U.S. flag on the moon was deployed by Neil Armstrong
and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin during their historic EVA on July 20, 1969
(at 4 days, 14 hours, and 9 minutes mission-elapsed time).

The footprints left by the Apollo astronauts
will not erode since there is no wind or water on the Moon.
The footprints should last at least 10 million years.

Astronaut Neil Armstrong first stepped on the moon
with his left foot.

The gold-plated 33-rpm record "Camelot"
was left behind on the moon by the Apollo astronauts.

Light from the Moon takes about a second & a half to reach Earth.

A quarter moon and a half moon are the same thing.
The quarter refers to the fraction of the lunar month
which has passed, whilst the half describes
the portion of the Moon's disc which is visible.

When walking on the moon,
astronaut Alan Sheppard hit a golf ball that went 2,400 feet,
nearly one-half a mile.

Astronaut and moon-walker James Irwin's NASA name tag,
coated with lunar dust, sold at auction for $310,500.
The cloth keepsake, a 6- by 12-inch rectangle,
was cut from the insulated jacket worn by Irwin
during the 1971 flight of Apollo 15.
Lunar dust, which created a dark gray tint around the tag's edges,
became embedded into the tag during three separate moonwalks Irwin took.
His jacket and other equipment were left on the Moon
to lighten the spacecraft’s load on the return trip home,
but Irwin cut out and kept his NASA tag as a memento.

Mare Tranquillitatis, or Sea of Tranquility,
was the name of the first manned lunar landing.

As of 1988, the U.S. census bureau determined
that a stunning 13% of the population believe that some
portion of the earth's moon is actually comprised of cheese.

Flying once around the moon is the equivalent
of a round trip from New York to London.
(Earth is about four times the size of the moon.)

The average desktop computer contains 5-10 times more computing
power than was used to land a man on the moon.

The multi-layered space suit worn by astronauts
on the Apollo moon landings weighed 180 pounds on Earth
and 30 pounds on the Moon with the reduced lunar gravity.

Just twenty seconds' worth of fuel remained
when Apollo 11's lunar module landed on the moon.

You always get to see the same half of the moon
because it is rotating at exactly the same rate
it is moving around the earth: 29.5 earth days.
This, however, is no coincidence since this match
is caused by unequal mass distribution on the moon.

Among the debris the astronauts have left on the moon
are a number of golf balls.

Baskin-Robbins introduced the flavor "Lunar Cheesecake"
to commemorate America's landing on the moon on July 20, 1969.

There is evidence that many people gain and lose weight
in accordance with the cycles of the Moon.

Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. was the second person,
after Neil Armstrong, to walk on the moon.

The volume of the Earth's moon is the same
as the volume of the Pacific Ocean.

The Moon has no global magnetic field.

Due to its size and composition,
the Moon is sometimes classified as a terrestrial 'planet'
along with Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.

The last man to fly in space alone
was not Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper,
but Apollo 17 command module pilot Ron Evans,
who circled the Moon alone while astronauts Gene Cernan
and Harrison Schmitt went to the surface.

Apollo Lunar Mission number 13,
which was aborted while enroute to the moon in 1970
because of an explosion of a fuel cell in the service module,
left the launch pad at 13:13 (CST) hours military time
and the accident occurred on April 13.

The Apollo missions returned 2196 rock samples,
weighing 382kg in total.

There are over 500,000 craters on the moon
that can be seen from the planet Earth.

The diameter of the largest crater on the moon
is 144 miles across.
The largest crater that can be seen on the Moon
is called Bailly or the 'fields of ruin.'
It covers an area of about 26,000 square miles,
about the size of West Virginia,
and over three time the size of Wales.

It is NOT TRUE that the Great Wall of China
is the only man-made object visible from the Moon.
It is only visible from a low Earth orbit, such as that of Skylab.
From this height, many other human artefacts,
cities, highways & field systems, also become visible.

If the moon were placed on the surface
of the continental United States,
it would extend from San Francisco to Cleveland (2,600 miles)

Easter is the first Sunday after the first Saturday
after the first full moon after the equinox.
(The equinox is quite often March 21,
but can also occur on the March 20 or 22.)