Moooon!!!

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The shattering of the Moon Mythology started with Galileo turning his telescope on her and ended with Neil Armstrong soiling her virgin land with his Giant Footfall.

In a blogpost sometime ago I narrated my personal history of Moonlanding:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/06/moonshine.html

At that moment I was sitting on the parapet outside the First Class Waiting Hall on the First Floor of the Howrah Station, listening to the murmur of the Monsoon Ganges, very much audible those nights of the late 1960s...

Since we were all following the various earlier unmanned Moon Missions preparatory to the Big Event, the Footfall itself was no surprise except for the build up, climax and the safe reentry.

Nothing much of scientific significance was expected: Moon was the most closely studied Body in the Heavens along with our Sun, perhaps. The only thing that was not seen was the Other Side of the Moon; and the unmanned satellites that went around our Moon broadcast enough pictures to show that there were no surprises: she is as quiet as this side.

Moon happens to be the precise opposite of all that is bragged about her (including the honeymoon...no honey there... and not a great place for honeymooning).

She is one of those most uninteresting objects up there: nothing ever happens, no cyclones, moonquakes, rain or rainbows, and no Politics that keep us all busy down hereunder.

Imagination boggles.

No air means no sound, no music, no band-baaji, no Diwali Dhamakas, no hot air balloons (real as well as imagined). No wind, no breeze, no sweat, no fans no AC.

No rainbows mean no colors!!!

It is all black or white depending on whether you are facing the Sun or the Stars (which don't twinkle). Well, most of the colorful heavens we see in the popular books are synthetic computer colors. Stars do have colors, red, blue, yellow (no green). But they are tiny tots and dots (You can have a look at the Sky Chart in the Cambridge Atlas of Astronomy, if you don't believe me).

And the Sunlight is so blinding white...

No trees, no water...there is a Sea of Tranquility but that is more like the Slough of Despond (both misnomers...there can be no sea without water nor slough without mud).

Not much was expected of the Moon Mission for a layman like me except perhaps that the geology studies on the Moonrock may settle the question whether the Moon is Earth's Sister, Spouse or Daughter (or Servant Maid).

I have decided not to Google for this Post so I don't know if the matter has been settled one way or the other.

The uniqueness of our Moon as a satellite of any planet is that she is the biggest relatively speaking; and she is Captured by the Earth in her spin which coincides with her orbital rotation more or less (this latter is fairly common), so that only one side of her is visible always to us. Well, not exactly...because she goes round in a fairly elliptical orbit, a bit of her dark side (like envy and jealousy) is visible this way, the so-called Librations (I keyboarded it as Libations last night and lost my sleep).

Because of her size and closeness she raises impressive tides in our oceans alright, and land as well...though much much less.

I am told that cycles of madness coincide with the Full Moon and the New Moon; hence Lunacy etymologically speaking. I have no first hand experience of this distinction between her phases.

Well, the phases of the Moon are really impressive; almost beautiful.

Everyone knows Moonshine, but there is Earthshine as well: The so-called dark part of a Crescent-Moon (Dooj-ka-Chaand) is not quite dark. I asked my mom about it...why so? She just took a second to come up with the right answer: it is the light reflected by the Moon of the Sunlight reflected on her by the Earth. My mom is one woman suppressed by our patriarchal system. Given a chance she would have been a great Scientist, Civil Engineer or Economist; but not a great Teacher...she can't bluff off-hand.

Moon has an 18-year cycle; not quite well-known. There is an entire book titled: Motions of the Moon.

Moon is responsible for total solar eclipses...one of the most fascinating and rare events. Total solar eclipse is possible only because the apparent size of our Moon happens to be precisely the same as that of our Sun...a coincidence without reason (but many rhymes)....one of the most enduring mysteries.

I am told that our Earth is slowly losing his sway on her Moon and our Moon is slipping away from our clutches...surely due to the Sins of Mankind...I mean Personkind.

Our distance to our Moon (point to point) is one of the most precisely measured and monitored of data (within a few centimeters in about 400, 000 kilometers). This has been possible due to our invention of the Laser....the Giant-Pulsed-Laser, pulses of which are reflected off the Parabolic Mirror placed on the Moon by the Apollo Astronauts in the Sea of Tranquility, and timed by atomic clocks.

Shakespeare said:

"...There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy..."

Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, 159–167

(See, I cheated again and Googled).

But as far as I know there are no Visible Light Natural Lasers in the Heavens (unlike Nuclear Fusion and Fission).

Laser (like the Lie) is an exclusive invention of Personkind.

Lastly I repeat my fascination with the Bengali penchant for naming their kids:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/02/roll-call.html

They do name their kids with oomph and a tra-la-la.....Ishani...for example....

There is no New Moon Ganguly (only Arundhuti, posing as a wee-little tiny star that bamboozles newly-weds in AP who are asked to spot it in broad daylight), nor Full Moon Chatterjee (Purnima is no English and so doesn't count).

But they do have a wow...Moon Moon Sen!!!!

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