06/14/2021 – Ephemeris – Images of the Moon: Then and now

This is Bob Moler with Ephemeris for Flag Day, Monday, June 14th. Today the Sun will be up for 15 hours and 33 minutes, setting at 9:29, and it will rise tomorrow at 5:56. The Moon, 3 days before first quarter, will set at 1 am.

The waxing crescent Moon shows its cratered highlands and flat lava plains that early telescopic astronomers fancied as water filled and called them seas, so the nomenclature stuck, and we call them seas to this day. When I grew up in the 1950s I was captivated by the moonscapes painted by Chesley Bonestell with their sharp rugged mountain peaks. The actual lunar landscape turned out to be softer, more rounded. The Earth’s surface features are younger than the Moon’s due to plate tectonics, something few geologists in the 1950s believed in. The Moon’s features are generally billions of years old and erosion by meteoroid impacts and ejecta have covered the landscape with a fine dust, over the eons, that smooths out its features.

The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.

Addendum

A Chesley Bonestell moonscape. Note the sharp detail including an arch at center right and an overhang at right. Such was the state of our ignorance before spacecraft like Ranger, Surveyor, Lunar Orbiter and Apollo reached the Moon. Click on the image to enlarge. Credit Chesley Bonestell.

Moonscape photographed by JAXA (Japan) spacecraft Kaguya with about the same orientation as the Bonestell painting, except from orbit. Click on the image to enlarge. Credit JAXA/NHK.

Image from Apollo 17 showing lunar erosion. Even the rocks in the foreground show that they were eroded. The image also shows astronaut Dr. Harrison “Jack” Schmidt. Click on the image to enlarge. Credit NASA.