Moon

The Moon is the closest cosmic neighbour of our planet, orbiting around it at an average distance of 380,000 km. Compared to Earth, however, it is almost four times smaller in diameter. Thanks to the so-called bound rotation the Moon shows the Earth still the same hemisphere.



On the facing side, even with naked eye you can watch dark lunar "seas" filled with solidified basalt lava, or bright lunar lands. A characteristic feature of the lunar surface are craters, which can be seen with a small telescope. They are the remains of the impacts of asteroids and comets in the distant past.



Because the Moon has no atmosphere, the temperature reaches more than 100 °C at the sunlit surface, but on the night side the temperature drops below -200 °C. Geologically, the moon is a dead body, which surface is essentially unchanged.



Except the Earth, the Moon is the only other cosmic body, where people were strolling on the surface. US astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin stood there first on July 20, 1969.