Amazing facts about our Moon: A Fascinating Celestial Object

A grey ball of rock

The Moon is a dusty ball of rock, measuring a shade under 2,160 miles (3,476km) in diameter, which is roughly a quarter of the size of Earth.

There are lots of amazing facts about our moon, such as its surface being home to mountains, huge craters and flat planes called ‘seas’ made of hardened lava. The Moon is also Earth’s only natural satellite – a celestial body that orbits a planet. Its orbit around our planet is shaped like a slightly squashed circle known as an ellipse.

Speaking of orbits, It takes 27.3 days for the Moon to travel all the way around Earth to complete its orbit. Although the Moon shines bright in the night sky, it doesn’t produce its own light. We can only see the Moon because it reflects light from the Sun.

Have you ever noticed how the Moon appears to change shape each night? This is because as it orbits Earth, the Sun lights up different parts of its surface. This means it is just our view of the Moon that’s changing, not the Moon itself. Obviously

Other amazing facts about our Moon include that as it travels around Earth, it rotates on its axis, just as our planet does. It takes roughly the same amount of time for the Moon to make a full rotation as it does for it to complete its orbit. This means we only see around 60% of the Moon’s surface from Earth! The part that faces Earth is known as the ‘near side’ and the other, the ‘far side’.

Many people think we only ever see one side of the Moon, but this isn’t exactly true. This idea formed because the two rotations are so similar.

Amazing facts about our moon go from one extreme to another

The surface temperature of the Moon varies from super hot to super cold! When the Sun hits its surface, temperatures can reach an incredible 127°C (260.6 F). But when the Sun ‘goes down’, temperatures can plummet to around -153°C (-243.4 F).

Like Earth, the Moon has gravity (the force that pulls things towards the ground). However, the Moon’s gravity is weaker; just one-sixth of the Earth’s gravity, in fact. That means you’d weigh much less if you were to stand on the Moon.

The last of this article’s amazing facts about our moon: Scientists aren’t entirely sure how the Moon was formed. A popular theory is that a Mars-sized rock, which has been named Theia, crashed into Earth around 4.5 billion years ago. The debris from the collision clumped together to make what is now our Moon.