The sivery moon
The Moon is the Earth's companion in space, lying roughly 380,000 kilometers (240,000 miles) away, a distance that would take two or three days to travel in a spacecraft. It is a ball of rock about one-quarter of the size of our planet, with no air, water and life. It is the only other body in space on which human beings have ever set foot. American astronauts walked on the moon during the Apollo space missions, from 1969 to 1972. The Moon moves around the Earth, so it rises and sets at different times each night. As it orbits the Earth, the Moon seems to change in shape-sometimes it is a crescent, other times it is a half-circle, and other times it is a full circle. There changes are known as the Moon's phases. A complete cycle of phases lasts 29 days and is the origin of our month. Even a quick glance at the Moon shows that it has dark markings which form a pattern like a face, popularly called the "man in the Moon". Every time we look at the Moon we see the same markings, which mean that the Moon keeps the same side turned towards us. There is a very good reason for this. The Earth's pull of gravity has "locked" the Moon so that it turns on its own axis in the same time as it orbits the Earth.
A simple pair of binoculars will show an amazing amount of detail on the Moon. There are dark, smooth lowlands and bright, mountainous areas dotted with craters of all sizes. The dark lowlands are called "seas", although there is no water on the moon. The seas have fanciful names such as Mare Nubium (Sea of Clouds), Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms) and Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquillity). The craters were formed by meteorites and comets hitting the moon long ago. The largest craters are over 100 km (6 miles) across, large enough to swallow a city. They are named after scientists and other famous people. Asteroids also hit the moon, digging out huge basins. These basins were later flooded by volcanic lava from inside the moon, forming the seas. A new theory says that the Moon originated in a huge collision between the Earth and another body. The other body was destroyed in the impact, but bits from it and the Earth were blasted into space. They created a ring around the Earth and later gathered together to form the Moon. 5. Josef Sadil, The Moon and the Planets, Paul Hamlyn Limited, London, 1963
Some common words found in the essay are:
Rocks Moon's, Astronomers Moon, Moon Earth's, Earth Sun, Sea Tranquillity, Earth Moon, Moon's Features, Tranquillity July, Moon Moon, Moon Apollo, moon dark, moon apollo, orbits earth moon, earth's shadow, sea tranquillity, earth moon, orbits earth, volcanic lava, 1972 moon, formed meteorites, walked moon,
Approximate Word count = 1022
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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