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Can you guess how long it would take you to cycle
to the Moon? If you cycled at 10 miles per hour which is probably
about as fast as you can go on your bike, then it would take you
994 days or just under 3 years!
But that would be without stopping for a drink,
sandwiches or even for the loo!
The Moon was one of the first things I ever saw
through a telescope.
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The moon glowing in the sky
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I was about 10 years old when I first looked through
a telescope at the Norwich Astronomical Society and saw the craters
on the Moon and the rings of Saturn.
Wow, they were brilliant to see! The good news
is that you don't need a telescope to look at stuff in the sky.
There is no better place to start than with the
Moon. It's big and it's bright and easy to
find, although sometimes you can't even see it at night because
it's hiding behind the Earth!
It takes the Moon just about 27 days to go around
the Earth once. It also takes about 27 days to spin once. This means
we always see the same face of the Moon.
We see the Moon in the sky because light from
the Sun bounces off it and gets to Earth. As the Moon moves around
the Earth and Sun, we see different parts of the Moon being lit
up by the Sun.
When we see a Full Moon we see all of the daytime
side of the Moon, when we see a crescent Moon, we see a little bit
of the night time side and a lot of the daytime side.
Try finding the Moon every evening for two or three
weeks and draw what you see. After drawing it for a couple of weeks,
can you see anything changing?
Read more: Got a question on the
Moon? Ask Mark Β»
Μύ
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