Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Our Moon: New Discoveries About Earth's Closest Companion
    Our Moon: New Discoveries About Earth's Closest Companion
    Our Moon: New Discoveries About Earth's Closest Companion
    Ebook121 pages1 hour

    Our Moon: New Discoveries About Earth's Closest Companion

    By Elaine Scott

    3/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    This illustrated book for young readers explores our fascination with the moon from ancient lunar theories to the Apollo 11 landing and beyond.
     
    Since the dawn of human existence, people have gazed up at the night sky and wondered about the moon. In Our Moon, Elaine Scott presents a concise history of what the moon has meant to humanity over the centuries, from ancient lunar legends and theories to the revolutionary discoveries of Galileo. She then shares a wealth of captivating, kid-friendly overview of what we know about the moon today.
     
    Scott covers everything from the newest theories on how the moon formed, to the recent, startling discovery of water on its surface and the very real possibility of future moon colonies. Illustrated with stunning, full-color photographs and packed with fun facts, this is the most complete and up-to-date book available on the moon.
     
    A glossary, bibliography, and index are included.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateFeb 16, 2016
    ISBN9780544750586
    Our Moon: New Discoveries About Earth's Closest Companion

    Related to Our Moon

    Related ebooks

    YA Science & Nature For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Statistically a Miracle

      Mar 22, 2019

      Statistically a Miracle
      5 min read

    • Article

      NASA Locations

      Feb 24, 2022

      NASA Locations
      1 min read

    • Article

      Launch Pad

      Aug 12, 2021

      Launch Pad
      2 min read

    • Article

      ASK Space

      Oct 7, 2021

      ASK Space
      5 min read

    • Article

      Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks

      May 7, 2022

      How does one write about a national park that is so vast that 90 percent of it is accessible only by foot or horseback? I suppose the best way is to start with the 10 percent where the majority of people visit, where they can enjoy spectacular scener

      9 min read

    • Article

      Sci-fi Night Sky

      Sep 7, 2023

      Sci-fi Night Sky
      8 min read

    • Article

      Hunting For Exomoons

      Feb 24, 2022

      Hunting For Exomoons
      1 min read

    • Article

      The Universe Has Made Almost All the Stars It Will Ever Make

      Aug 19, 2020

      Our human world is soaked in light. For starters there are the 100,000 trillion photons arriving every second at every square centimeter of Earth’s dayside surface, after racing here from the outer envelope of a natural giant thermonuclear reactor we

      5 min read

    • Article

      Scientists Have No Defense Against Awe

      Jun 12, 2016

      Eileen Pollack, author of The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still a Boys’ Club, hinted at the complexity of the relationship between science and the soul in a recent essay: “We need scientists who recognize the reality of this illusion we st

      5 min read

    • Article

      What to Eat in Atlantis: Five Menus for Five Mythical Cities.: Five menus for five mythical cities.

      Aug 27, 2015

      In his legendary last battle with the traitorous Mordred, King Arthur suffers a blow to the skull. For a moment, it looks like the end. But then he is borne away to the island paradise of Avalon, where nine sisters feed him magic apples that grant hi

      6 min read

    • Article

      How To Find An Alien Moon

      Feb 24, 2022

      How To Find An Alien Moon
      2 min read

    • Article

      A Martian on Earth

      Feb 1, 2023

      A Martian on Earth
      5 min read

    • Article

      Geology Makes You Time-Literate

      Sep 13, 2018

      As a geologist and professor I speak and write rather cavalierly about eras and eons. One of the courses I routinely teach is “History of Earth and Life,” a survey of the 4.5-billion-year saga of the entire planet—in a 10-week trimester. But as a hum

      11 min read

    • Article

      The Moon

      Oct 2, 2020

      The Moon
      4 min read

    • Article

      Fifty Years Of Lunar Geology

      May 29, 2019

      Fifty Years Of Lunar Geology
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Legacy Of APOLLO

      Nov 17, 2022

      The Legacy Of APOLLO
      7 min read

    • Article

      Why Mars Is the Best Planet

      Jan 13, 2017

      Why Mars Is the Best Planet
      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Our Moon

    3/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Our Moon - Elaine Scott

      Clarion Books

      3 Park Avenue

      New York, New York 10016

      Copyright © 2015 by Elaine Scott

      All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to trade.permissions@hmhco.com or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

      Front cover: Enhanced image of the moon and starry sky. (Romolo Tavani/Shutterstock)

      Cover design by Opal Roengchai

      All images not otherwise credited are in the public domain.

      Clarion Books is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

      www.hmhco.com

      The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

      Scott, Elaine, 1940– author.

      Our moon : new discoveries about Earth’s closest companion / Elaine Scott.

      pages cm.

      Summary: "Full of captivating, kid-friendly information, Our Moon covers everything from the newest theories on how the moon formed, to the recent, startling discovery of water on its surface and the very real possibility of future moon colonies. Illustrated with full-color photographs and packed with fun facts, this is the most complete and up-to-date book available on the moon. Includes glossary, bibliography, and index"—Provided by publisher.

      Audience: Ages 9–12.

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN 978-0-547-48394-8 (hardcover)

      1. Space flight to the moon—Juvenile literature. 2. Moon—Juvenile literature. 3. Moon—Exploration—Juvenile literature. 4. Earth (Planet)—Juvenile literature. I. Title.

      TL799.M6S26 2015

      523.3—dc23

      2015006855

      eISBN 978-0-544-75058-6

      v1.0116

      Title page image: A supermoon photographed on July 18, 2008. Supermoons occur when the moon is full and its orbit carries it closest to Earth, causing it to appear bigger and brighter than ever in the night sky. The scientific term for this close approach is perigee. The moon’s orbit around Earth varies from an average distance of 225,623 miles at perigee to an average of 252,088 miles from Earth at its farthest point, or apogee. (NASA/Sean Smith)

      For my daughter, Susan, whom I love to the moon and back

      Introduction

      [Image]

      A full moon lightens the darkness of the night. (Jon Sullivan)

      ON JULY 20, 1969, astronaut Michael Mike Collins sat at the controls of Columbia, the space vehicle that had carried him and his two fellow astronauts Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) and Edwin Buzz Aldrin (1930–) to the moon. Neil and Buzz had left Columbia and were already on the moon, making their first explorations of its strange and powdery surface. After much serious communication between Mission Control in Houston, Texas, and the history-making astronauts of Apollo 11, a voice from Houston again crackled into Mike’s headset.

      Mission Control: Among the large headlines concerning Apollo this morning, there’s one asking that you watch for a lovely girl with a big rabbit. An ancient legend says a beautiful Chinese girl called Chang-o has been living there for 4,000 years. It seems she was banished to the moon because she stole the pill of immortality from her husband. You might also look for her companion, a large Chinese rabbit, who is easy to spot, since he is always standing on his hind feet in the shade of a cinnamon tree. The name of the rabbit is not recorded.

      Collins: Okay. We’ll keep a close eye out for the bunny girl.

      [Image]

      Chang-o, now more commonly known as Chang’e, the Chinese moon goddess. (Library of Congress)

      Of course, that communication was a joke. The mission was going well, and there was time for a little fun. No one thought there was a Chinese princess or a big rabbit on the moon. Not in 1969. But four thousand years before, in ancient China, when people looked at the full moon and saw the dark markings on its surface, they created many stories to explain them, including the one about Chang-o.

      Other ancient cultures created stories about those dark spots on the moon too. One tale sees the man in the moon as a biblical figure. The story in the Bible says Cain killed his brother Abel while they lived in Eden with their parents, Adam and Eve. As punishment for the crime, Cain was banished from his home to a land east of Eden. A legend developed that the land east of Eden was the moon and that Cain was sent there to live, doomed to orbit Earth forever, gazing at the planet he could no longer inhabit because of his terrible crime.

      [Image]

      Stonehenge, the mysterious ring of stones in Wiltshire, England, may have been used as a type of observatory by people living more than 4,500 years ago. (Bernard Gagnon)

      These stories, passed from generation to generation over thousands of years, tell us that the moon has fascinated humans from the beginning of our history. Not only did our ancestors tell stories and sing songs about the glowing disk that moved across the sky each night; some of their civilizations even worshiped the moon, building temples and pyramids in its honor. Others took a scientific

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1