Part A:

The lunar lowlands of consist of Maria and few craters while the lunar highlands is entirely filled with mountains and craters.¹ The mountains act as borders to the low and highlands.² Maria are found on the side of the Moon facing Earth; because the maria are so vast and exist as the result of ancient volcanic ash on the Moon, it can be assumed that the Moon was covered in them at one point in its life. Over the millennia that the Moon has existed as a celestial body to the Earth, the face of the Moon that looks at the Earth has not seen as much of outer space as its rear-end; thus, resulting in more space debris crashing into the rear-end causing mountains and craters  that cover the maria that once existed on that side.³

Part B:

On the Moon, maria predate craters everywhere¹; this is because the Moon is no longer volcanically active so all instances of maria are extremely old and nonrenewable,⁴ whereas craters can be formed at any time by collision from space debris and newer craters always trump the older ones.² In the case for Mare Insularum’s craters Copernicus and Kepler this same situation of mare before crater can be seen as the vast and consistent land of Mare Insularum is interrupted by the existence of the two craters. As another example Mare Tranquilitatis contains the crater Plinius and nowhere on the Moon is there ever the existence of a mare existing atop a crater, as it is no longer volcanically active.³

Part C:

Central peaks are a lunar phenomena that occur when large objects impact the Moon and cause a rippling on the crust of the Moon strong enough affect the entire celestial body, this wave would hit a point on the Moon wave around to the opposite end of the Moon and back to the point of origin like the rippling of water but on a sphere.¹ Because they cause much smaller impacts with a much less noticeable impact on the Moon’s crust, smaller craters don’t have central peaks. When the overlapping of craters occurs the younger craters are always the smallest, as larger craters will cover small impact craters when they occur; this however is only the case when referring to overlapping impact craters, so two random non-overlapping craters that differ in size are not as easy to discern age from.² The origin of all lunar craters, like impact craters on all other celestial bodies, is space debris.  The randomized nature of the Moon’s impact craters is the strongest indication that the craters are the result of impact from space debris and indeed not artificially created by any intelligent lifeform.³

Part D:

The highest mountain on the Moon is Mons Huygens, which is about 5.5 kilometers tall and is located in in the Montes Apenninus.¹ Generally speaking mountain ranges on the Moon do not form in straight lines, since the Moon has no form of plate tectonics to control the shifting of land masses. The reason that mountain ranges on the Moon form radially is because the collisions experienced by the Moon ripple radially and stop to form peaks.²

Part E:

The Moon, as a satellite to the Earth, is a body with two faces; one face that the Earth sees at all times, and another that is always hidden. Though both sides of the Moon contain maria and craters,¹ the ratio of this is the differentiating factor. The front face of the Moon is visually about 50% maria and 50% craters, whereas the hidden face of the Moon barely appears to be 5% maria.² The reason for this outrageously large difference being the amount of exposure each side has to outer space, meaning that the hidden side of the Moon is far more likely to have collisions with space debris thanks to prolonged exposure.³ Another difference between the hidden and seen aces of the Moon, besides the hidden side having more craters,⁴ is the depth of the craters on either side of it. The hidden side of the Moon has noticeably deep craters when compared to its counterpart, this being another result of a serious difference in the number of impacts. The larger the quantity of impacts in a region, the deeper they cut into the Moon.⁵

Part F:

Despite the fact that Mercury is a planet and the Moon is just a satellite, both of these celestial bodies share a number of similarities. For example: both Mercury and the Moon show signs of a once volcanically active life, both hold a number of craters varying in size, and both show a great deal of foreign material in their landmasses as a result of encountered space debris.¹ The most notable differences between Mercury and the Moon are: the amount of craters per surface area, the general size of both bodies, and the color the native land for both.² Because both the Moon and Mercury had different upbringings into the solar system, in terms of the formation of both, their native materials are very different.³

Part GH:

The Apollo 11 landed on a relatively flat portion of the Moon, in terms of deviation in elevation, and was the “first venture to another world.” The Apollo 12 landing was simply a mission to the Moon to retrieve pieces of the Surveyor III spacecraft that had landed in a crater months before. The Apollo 14 landed near a cone crater on the Moon and was the second attempt mission to land at this particular site. The Apollo 15 was NASA’s most daring Moon landing up to that point, as the goal of this Moon landing was not so heavily focused on perfecting the ability to get astronauts to and from the Moon, but rather for true exploration. The Apollo 16 was mostly directed to search for a crater deep enough in the Moon to potentially expose bedrock for scientist to have evidence of once prevalent volcanism beneath the Moon’s surface. The Apollo 17, which was the final in the Apollo series of missions to the Moon, was an astronaut mission set over a three day period to carry out a complex geological field campaign on the Moon. Though the Americans had the honor of landing humans on the Moon, the Soviet Union holds the title for being the first to land an artificial body on the Moon and bring back some bit of Moon sample. The Soviet Landings of Luna 16 and 21 were both on maria while Luna 17 was in a cratered area.

Understanding Lunar and Planetary Phases

New Moon

Waxing Crescent

First Quarter

Waxing Gibbous

Full Moon

Waning Gibbous

Third Quarter

Waning Crescent

 

 

 

 

PART 1

During a solar eclipse, the Moon must be in the New Moon phase.

During a lunar eclipse, the Moon must be in the Full Moon phase.

PART 2

Figure 1

 

If the Moon is in its 1^st quarter phase, it should rise at noon.

If the Moon is full, it should rise at 6pm.

The Moon would be on one one’s meridian at 6am if the phase is 3^rd quarter.

If the Moon is in the 1^st quarter phase, it should set at midnight.

The moon would be on the meridian at noon if the phase was new.

If the moon is setting in the west, it is 6am.

PART 3

Figure 2
 

When examining the rotation of the Moon during part 3 of the lab, I discovered that viewing the Moon from a single perspective while rotating it held the greatest representation of the perspective relationship between the Sun and the Moon. The Moon’s motion around the Earth can easily be compared tying a block to a rope and spinning it while observing a face or point of the block from the center of its spin. From that perspective, one would observe that while spinning the block the point or face that would face the center would not change in perspective; in this same way, the Moon does only has one “face” looking towards Earth. From Earth’s point of view, the dark side of the Moon is not always the same as the hidden side. From the Earth’s perspective the hidden side of the moon is that which is never seen from the perspective of Earth’s land, while any portion of the moon can be dark; this allows for the Earth perspective to see both phases of full and new Moons.

PART 4

Lunar, Superior Planetary and Inferior Planetary Phases

Inferior and superior planets do not share all of the same phases, inferior planets experience all of the phases from: new, full, quarter, crescent, to gibbous; whereas superior planets only display full or gibbous. Superior planets would always be at their brightest during their full phases, because those perspectives show no dark portion of the planet; even though the darkest of the superior planets that is viewable is the gibbous phase.

PART 5

Because the sun rises toward the east and north would be at the front of the paper, east would be to the right of the page meaning that the sun is in an accurate position regarding the cardinal directions. The reason Figure 1 suggests that a lunar and solar eclipse would occur every time the moon completes an orbit because it does not account for the positions of the Moon, Sun, and Earth in three dimensional space since they are not perfectly aligned on a single plane. If a spaceship were to follow along Earth’s orbit without actually orbiting Earth it would not see only one side of the moon, as in this case it would not suffer from a superiority effect since the space ship would be outside the orbit of the Earth at a stagnant displacement. If Venus can only be viewed in Positions 1, 2, and 8 on figure 2 then it could never be seen in a quarter phase or a new phase suggesting that it would be a superior planet. Superior planets can always be seen at midnight because they are always either full or gibbous. The inferior planets would include Mercury and Venus. While Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are Superior planets.

 

From this Lab I learned the difference between waning and waxing, the phases of superior and inferior planets, and how to identify the phases of the Moon. The point of this lab was to understand the phases of the planets and the moon from Earth's perspective, as well as understanding how scientists debunked the geocentric universe theory without having to actually be in space.