Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin (1889–1977) is considered one of the first movie stars ever and made film history with his acting and his works. He is also one of the few artists who managed the transition from silent films to sound films.
Because of using archetypal imagery and symbols in his films, it is natural that the moon could also play a part somewhere. We found four references:
Other than the moonstone, there are more minerals with the Moon being part of their name: the moonlight topaz. The topaz is a compound of aluminum, fluorine and silicon and has the hardness value of 8, on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness from 1 (= selenite) to 10 (= diamond). Which means it is a very hard mineral. Topazes exist worldwide, but most findings originate in Brazil. When conditions are favorable for the growth of this mineral, their weight can easily reach up to 220 lb and more. The biggest topaz that was ever found, was 3.3 ft long and weighed 2.5 tons (Mozambique, Africa).
We figured it would be obvious to look for the full moon in the works of England’s most famous poet William Shakespeare (1564–1616). Surprisingly, the »moon« is to be found more often, however the word »full moon« appears in the original text only once, namely in »King Lear«.
The text of the comedy »A Midsummer Night’s Dream« (approx. 1595), contains the moon a whopping 52 times (28 times in the last act alone) and it can be assumed that Shakespeare was thinking of the full moon when he wrote these lines. Although it is not described as the »full moon«.
In German we call the weeks after the wedding »Flitterwochen«, which has really no relevance to the moon. In many languages it is referred to as »honey moon«, which derives from »honey month« and therefore denotes a specific time with particular sweetness after the wedding. However, not always has the connection to the moon been interpreted positively, because one saw in the waning of the Moon the symbol of the decline of attraction that the happy couple would experience during the course of years after the wedding.
As is generally known, the moonlight is actually sunlight reflecting from the surface of the Moon and reaching us here on Earth. You ask yourself the question, whether the moonlight may have a different colour than the sunlight, especially since a nightly scenery usually appears to be bluish. Also movie scenes, are portrayed in blue and so are many pictures and photographs. We would like to forestall the answer: the moonlight is nearly white. The night appears blue due to other reasons.
On Wednesday, 15th June 2011 (or Thursday 16th June for certain time zones) is full moon and a total lunar eclipse at the same time. However, it will only be completely visible in the Near and Middle East. In Asia and Australia, the moon will be already set and in Europe and Africa, the moon will be just rising by the time the lunar eclipse takes place. In America, this event won’t be visible at all.
When examining it thoroughly, we humans will never be able to touch the Moon directly, because even when an astronaut is standing on its surface, there is always the glove of the spacesuit in between, without which, life could not exist on foreign celestial bodies (consider also Mars).
There are a variety of dangers that the spacesuit protects the wearer from: vacuum, cold and heat, weightlessness, micrometeorites and radiation. Hereby, a distinction is made between suits that are only worn inside the space capsule during specific maneuvers, and suits that are used for space walks and actually leave the spacecraft.
It is often said that more children are born at full moon. Meanwhile, many different studies have shown this not to be the case.
An American study from the years 1997–2001, can probably be referred to as a very popular example that investigated the influence of the moon cycle on births. The study was conducted with an impressive amount of 564,039 births and took place over a period of 62 moon cycles. Not only full moon, but also all other phases of the moon cycle were observed with the result that there is no verifiable correlation:
Google is on everyone’s lips and in our computer oriented world there is probably not a day, where we don’t encounter the name of the US enterprise with its famous search engine in one form or another. We google – this is how the Oxford English Dictionaries have it since 2006.
Google has demonstrated more than once, how to change the world with unconventional ideas. Since 2007, there is a project, which continues this tradition: the »Google Lunar X Prize«.
Today is the last day of 2012 and we asked ourselves when there has been or will be a full moon in the past or the future at the turn of the year. What a fascinating picture, if you are imagining also the full moon next to the firework welcoming the New Year. The spectacle of humans meets the eternal beauty of the universe …
Our Moon consists of rock, which was formed newly during its creation through a collision between the Earth and another planet, around 4.5 billion years ago. Lunar maria were created through meteoroid impacts, which can be seen as dark spots if observed from Earth.
A small amount of these rocks are on Earth. One part stems from a variety of moon missions (Apollo and Luna), the other from meteorites that struck the Earth as fragments. If you add up the registered mass of these rocks, you’ll end up with 738 kg (1,627 pounds). Which is actually »just a grain of rice« in comparison to the 81,000,000,000,000 kg that our Moon weighs.